Controversy Sells: Witness the Wet-Wine Dress, grown in a Vat, and Woven by Bacteria

By Shaun Stanert

Employing controversy as a marketing and promotional tool to sell products effectively is nothing new. Still, the fact that it does work, and works well, always intrigues me.

Creating a clamor a around an issue also appears to be a popular way to catapult a career. It seems that it does not matter what the ethical content surrounding the issue is, just that it garners publicity and eventually name recognition for those involved. Hence the saying any publicity is better than no publicity.

There are benign uses of this “creating controversy” marketing method. Uses, in which no one gets hurt such as concept cars, made only for attention-getting demonstration purposes at auto shows, which never actually make it to car-dealership showrooms.

There are also not so harmless controversies such as scandals. These negative scenarios often manage to catapult one person’s career while humiliating someone else. In the USA, the Monica Lewinsky- former President Clinton scandal, likely falls into this category.

A recent example of a benign but fascinating product presently creating ripples of admiring turbulence is the “wet wine dress.” I have included an article about it below. Apparently, this dress is grown in a vat of wine, from cellulose woven by bacteria. It also must be kept wet to prevent it from becoming brittle.

The dress design is obviously not practical, at this point, and is presently only an attention grabber for fashion in general. If scientists can someday make the fibers more flexible, the dress may actually be wearable by the public.

This dress certainly caught my eye. The captivating scientific aspects of the dress, particularly the fact that bacteria weave it, lured me in. I was not aware that bacteria could weave, were you? That tidbit of information simultaneously fascinates and repels me. It brings to mind bizarre visions of an army of bacteria weaving a brittle wine-soaked barrier around everyone and everything.

I am also attracted to and respect the marketing brilliance of choosing to use this futuristic dress as a marketing tool.

HERE IS THE ARTICLE:
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Wet wine dress grows as 'cave woman' fashion
POSTED: 12:09 p.m. EDT, March 15, 2007
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters)

-- It's guaranteed to make your head spin.
An Australian scientist has grown a dress from cellulose woven by bacteria in a vat of fermenting wine, saying it is art but could be the future of fashion.

The "cave woman" design dress must be kept wet because the cellulose fibers are not long enough to be flexible and, as it dries, they become brittle and break.

In order to shape the dress, slimy cellulose is scooped off the surface of the fermenting wine and layered around a blow-up doll. It then shrinks, taking the form of the body. The doll is deflated when the dress is in the right shape.

"This is art; it is not meant to be practical," inventor Gary Cass told Reuters on Wednesday.
"It is meant to be a provocative object, to spark debate about future fashion," said Cass, a scientific technician at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

Cass was inspired to create the dress when he was working in a vineyard many years ago, but it was not until he gained funding from an arts group that he was able to produce it.

Cass said fermenting wine produces a slimy, rubbery top layer caused by bacteria which, if left alone, keep spinning cellulose.

"We just took winemaking to the next step," he said.

"But the problem is that the fibers are not long enough to be flexible. The next step is to try and make the fibers longer or join them to get more flexibility."

Cass said that, once the fibers became more pliant, his creation would have a more practical application.

"If you wanted a shirt you could get a cast made of your body and layer the cellulose around it," he said.

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