“A yellow leather jacket” might not be your first answer, but it’s exactly what came out of a collaboration between Danish fashion brand Ganni and Mexican biomaterials company Polybion. “We were impressed by the fact that a lot of people love the jacket because the material did not resemble leather,” said Alexis Gómez-Ortigoza, Polybion’s co-founder. “We isolated our first bacteria from that drink.”Kombucha is an increasingly popular fermented tea drink, and the bacterial biomass used to make the jacket, called Celium, comes from that jar. “We feed the bacteria with fruit waste, which is extremely abundant here in central Mexico,” said Gómez-Ortigoza. Although it shares some similarities with leather, Celium is an organic material that's meant to have its own look and feel.

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Persons: ”, Alexis Gómez, Polybion’s, “, Axel, Bárbara González, Gómez, Polybion, Ortigoza, Lauren Bartley, Ganni, Michelle Obama, Bartley, Kate Goldsworthy, who’s, Kate Fletcher Organizations: CNN, Ganni’s Sustainability, University of the Arts London, Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Oslo Metropolitan University Locations: Mexican, Mexico, Celium, France, Norway