Designer Alexander McQueen was no stranger to controversy during his
short life, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that his legacy to challenge
convention continues post mortem.
In a rather strange turn of events, Central Saint Martins fashion student
Tina Gorjanc has announced she is to create a small range of accessories
using ‘human leather,’ currently being produced in a laboratory using the
DNA from Alexander McQueen.
If this all sounds macabre, the waters get even murkier as the story
unfolds. Gorjanc was able to secure a strand of McQueen’s hair from his
first collection ‘Jack the Ripper Stalks his Victims’ where a lock of his
hair was secured in a plastic pocket on a garment, much in the way evidence
is preserved in a crime scene.
Gorjanc will be harvesting to extract the DNA from the hair, which can then
in turn be formulated to create skin tissue and subsequently undergo the
same procedures as turning animal skin into leather suitable for clothing
and accessories. This is done via a tanning process, which can be either
vegetable tanned or using chromium sulfate, also referred to chrome-tanned
leather.
In an interview with Dezeen, an influential architecture and design
publication, Gorjanc states: “The Pure Human project was designed as a
critical design project that aims to address shortcomings concerning the
protection of biological information and move the debate forward using
current legal structures,” she says. “If a student like me was able to
patent a material extracted from Alexander McQueen’s biological information
as there was no legislation to stop me, we can only imagine what big
corporations with bigger funding are going to be capable of doing in the
future.”
The final outcome consists of a range of commercial leather products
cultivated from extracted human biological material. The Pure Human project
uses Alexander McQueen biological information since his initial hair labels
represent a reliable source of authenticated genetic information.
Photo credits: Tina Gorjanc, TomMannion, VicPhilips (Single Malt Teapot), Sanne Visser