The Light Bag

One of the major reasons that rural children drop out of schools is because a lot of them are forced to study under the dim light of a candle or they have to make do with kerosene lamps at home. While some homes have electricity, frequent power cuts, especially at night, could result in a complete blackout to a child’s future. This is where the Salaam Baalak Trust steps in. The Light Bag is an interesting contraption: a specially designed polyester school bag for children, its pouch is equipped with an LED light and a solar panel (imported especially from China). Through the attached solar panel, the LED light is charged during a child’s trek to school and back. Since many children attend open classrooms, the bags are charged throughout the day. At night, the bag’s pouch can be out-turned to function as a makeshift lamp.

The brainchild behind the design is Anusheela Saha who approached the Salaam Baalak Trust, an NGO which works towards improving the living conditions for underprivileged children. The idea of developing the Light Bag sparked when her maid complained about the frequent power-cuts in Delhi and how people in the slums were affected by it. "I started thinking about a way that could make lives simpler for the slum dwellers. The fact that India is a country that has plenty of sun and fails to provide sufficient electricity, were the two dots that I connected," she says.

Anusheela worked with the Salaam Baalak team to come up with a design that was simple, cheap and sustainable. "We did some research before we started. The solar panels and LED had to be weightless to ensure that the bag wasn't too heavy to be carried by the children. We also had to ensure that the bag had the right kind of space to hold school books," she says. The Salaam Baalak Trust is now looking for crowd funding opportunities for the bag to be manufactured in larger numbers and reach more children in other regions.

{design, design for a cause, innovation, cheap and sustainable, product, arts+activism}

BioCouture: Clothes That Are Grown

There is fantastic work happening in the realm of fashion. Materials (texturally translucent and as stunning as leather) are being grown using bacterial cellulose in laboratories to create beautiful garments. "Imagine growing a dress in a vat of liquid using bacteria," says Suzanne Lee, founder of BioCouture, a London-based bio-fashion consultancy that is the first of its kind. It collaborates with scientists to create organic fabrics—fabrics so versatile in character that they can be cut, shaped, folded and sown.

The Kombucha recipe—a mix of cider vinegar, sugar, some luminous green tea and a shot of yeast and bacteria—is used to make the textile. Through the process of fermentation, the micro-organisms work as tiny powerhouses, spinning thin nanofibres that merge over a period of time and transform into a layered, film-like sheet of cellulose. The sheet is then harvested, washed and dried to eventually create chic, wearable outfits.

 

Suzanne Lee, who is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Fashion/Textiles at Central Saint Martins, London, first learned about this phenomenon while researching for her book, Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow’s Wardrobe. Other than speaking to designers, she also interacted with scientists and engineers, and it was during one of these interviews that one biologist introduced this revelatory process to her. 'So we started to collaborate; we got some funding and worked on a project to see if we could grow some material using microbes,’ she says in a documentary titled, The Next Black. The success of the project convinced her that they were standing at the threshold of a new fashion era. 

Since then, BioCouture has created a middle ground where path-breaking science and innovative design come together to form a cohesive whole. From Kimonos and Bomber Jackets to shoes and luxury sportswear, BioCouture is creating excellent prototypes (see images). The home-grown materials are sustainable and bio-degradable, which means that they are great companions of the environment. Their longevity though, is questionable. Each piece of the garment is destined to undergo the natural process of decomposition, but the team at BioCouture is working with scientists to address this drawback.

The future of fashion is constantly evolving and brimming with endless possibilities. It’s only a matter of time when the luxury stores and boutiques in your city will be offering rows of algae, yeast, bacteria and fungi to choose from.

{fashion, innovation, science} 

This piece was written for Platform Magazine, India