Would You Wear Fashion Made From Your Own DNA?

In the near future, you might shimmy into a supple coat made of your own skin. That’s the thought-provoking—yet thankfully still fictional—premise presented by one designer who attended Biofabricate, a conference in New York City examining how new advances in organic materials are changing our world.

In an exclusive video interview, Tina Gorjanc, the designer behind the Pure Human Project, tells us about her double-edged mission: to imagine how biotech will infiltrate the luxury goods market, and expose legislative loopholes that protect human genetic information.

Gorjanc raised eyebrows earlier this year when she first unveiled her work in this area, and said it could be used to create leather products with synthetic human skin “grown” from the DNA of famed fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Though Gorjanc hasn’t actually done this, nor made any synthetic skin yet products yet (her creations are made from pig leather dyed and treated to look human), she has filed a real patent in the UK for the process. Learn more about what drives her in our one-on-one.

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