Silk is a remarkable product of nature. For many millennia, silkworms and spiders have known how to make a fantastic fibre that’s thinner than human hair, stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar. We, humans, are only catching up. Several teams of researchers around the world are exploring how to make silk-like proteines with the same qualities. Now, North Face has teamed up with one of them to create a jacket made from a synthetic silk fiber named ‘Qmonos’, the Japanese word for spider. North Face describes it as “the world’s first piece of clothing made from artificial protein material.” Keep an eye for the forthcoming issue of The Optimist for a feature on the promise of silk to make our economy more sustainable while creating jobs, lots of lots of them.
North Face launches winter jacket using synthetic spider’s silk
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