Fiona Bell of the Living Matter Lab at CU Boulder’s ATLAS Institute is designing high fashion from the slime that forms on top of kombucha—really. She and her colleagues ferment this tea beverage to produce a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY), a thin layer of slimy, skin-like growth. They then dry the SCOBY to create a material that looks and feels a lot like animal leather. Bell says that anyone who wants to can also grow their own kombucha leather, right from the comfort of their kitchens.

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