Smelling like booze usually means you've been partying. But what if that wine smell came from something else -- like your clothes? Researchers in Australia have created a dress made not from cotton or silk, but from wine. Apparently, if wine is exposed to oxygen during the fermentation process -- conditions that produce vinegar -- a slimy byproduct called cellulose forms on the top of the vats. Cellulose consists of short fibers that can be combined to produce a fabric. Unlike cotton fib res, which can easily be spun into even longer fib res, wine fabric is considerably more unstable. In fact, if the cellulose dries up you lose the fibers altogether.
To create the dress, the scientists draped the cellulose over inflatable dolls (hehe -- wonder where they got those!). When the dress was complete, the dolls were deflated so that the outfit could be transferred onto the body of the model pictured at right.
But teetotalers shouldn't worry just yet -- wine dresses that last are still a long way off.
