London: Fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s DNA is being used by a recent graduate from Slovenia to create a collection made from ‘human leather.’
Tina Gorjanc, a Central Saint Martin pass out has developed the idea of creating a collection which is made in a laboratory using McQueen’s DNA, reported Telegraph.
McQueen, Central Saint Martins’ star alumni, used his own hair in his “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims,” collection, and Gorjanc has managed to get one hair from the owner of these pieces, in order to extract his genetic information for her research.
The student submitted her concept as part of the final project for her degree, creating prototype backpacks and jackets using pig skins. “You use a process which is called de-extinction, in which a biological agent is applied to the hair in the form of liquid and you extract certain genetic information from it and then you use that information to reprogram already existing skin so it is the exact texture and colour and everything of the original source, so in this case McQueen’s skin.
“It also depends on how much the hair sample is preserved as to how much information you can extract – fortunately McQueen’s hair was preserved in a good state,” Gorjanc said. The finished product looks like the leather one gets in the shops, she claimed. “While the skin is growing in the laboratory, it doesn’t really look like skin, because we are are just growing the first two layers of the skin.
Visually, when you tan it and apply colouration to it, it can look just like leather.” Gorjanc has also applied for a patent application for this project, because she says the fact that you can patent someone else’s genetic information is central to her point. The budding designer has no plans to make the collection for commercial purposes, but aims to demonstrate how genetic information could potentially be exploited.
