Tina Gorjanc, a cheeky student/designer at London’s legendary art and fashion school Central Saint Martins, plans to grow swathes of Alexander McQueen’s skin from DNA, tan the hide and construct it all into a human leather jacket. Goodbye horses! I’m flying over you!
It’s creepy, but it’s meant to be. Gorjanc will harness McQueen’s DNA from locks of hair he included in the tag of garments in “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims”—McQueen’s 1992 graduate collection, also at Central Saint Martins—and has proposed to turn the skin into handbags and backpacks as well, patent willing. According to Dezeen, her objective is not to make you feel like a Donner party refugee or deranged serial killer, but to challenge the process by which it’s legal to actually own human DNA:
“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,” Gorjanc said.
“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.”
She’s already cut prototypes using pigskin, which is probably more palatable than human flesh to your average non-vegan (though I’m sure one would argue their equality); to make those more “realistic,” she gave the pigskin freckles and designed a lapel on the moto jacket with a koi fish tattoo similar to one the designer had on his body. The right sleeve of the jacket, too, reads “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”—a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream that McQueen, too, had tatted on his right bicep.