A new research project aims to turn wine into dresses with a creative – if slightly gross – colony of bacteria.

While most of us worry about spilling wine onto our clothes, researchers at the Bioalloy laboratories at the University of Western Australia have developed a program to turn wine into clothes by utilising wine’s natural fermentation process.

Entitled Micro'be' (see, scientists can be funny too), the fermented fashion project uses a colony of Acetobacter bacteria — the kind that ferment wine into vinegar – to create 'micro fibrils of cellulose', a material similar to cotton which is used to fashion the garments.

While the research team initially started creating the Micro'be' fabric from fermented from red wine, they’ve now moved on to producing it from fermented white wine, beer and even Guinness.

Although the Micro'be' fashion fabric could be the answer to cotton shortages around the world, we don’t expect to see the dresses on sale in Topshop anytime soon.

What do you think? Would you wear clothing made from fermented wine? Tell us your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments section below.

Source and image credit: psfk.com