Developed by cellular agriculture startup Modern Meadows, Zoa is the world’s first biofabricated leather. Able to be any density. Hold to any mold. Create any shape. Take on any texture. Combine with any other material. Be any size, seamlessly. A liquid. A solid. An anomaly. Grown with the intention of making things of real value, that exist not just to serve humans, but to co-exist with everything.
“The time has come
for a less raw material
That comes from nature
and not from animals
Able to create new things
Wild with feeling and texture
and imagination
A leap forward
That leaves only
the faintest footprint.”
From October 1st, 2017 to January 2018, Modern Meadow reveals its first generation of Zoa biofabricated leather materials to the world, expressed as a graphic t-shirt at the Museum of Modern Art fall exhibition, Items: Is fashion Modern? With this graphic t-shirt, Modern Meadow asks visitors to imagine what’s possible when leather creation is freed from the structure of animal skin.
The Zoa prototype seeks to demonstrate one such possibility: liquid leather. Able to morph, to take any shape, and combine with other materials, Zoa constructs a t-shirt completely through liquid assembly, no stitching required.
Items: Is Fashion Modern? explores the present, past—and sometimes the future—of 111 items of clothing and accessories that have had a strong impact on the world in the 20th and 21st centuries—and continue to hold currency today. Among them are pieces as well-known and transformative as the Levi’s 501s, the Breton shirt, and the Little Black Dress, and as ancient and culturally charged as the sari, the pearl necklace, the kippah, and the keffiyeh.
Items will also invite some designers, engineers, and manufacturers to respond to some of these indispensable items with pioneering materials, approaches, and techniques—extending this conversation into the near and distant future, and connecting the history of these garments with their present recombination and use. Driven first and foremost by objects, not designers, the exhibition considers the many relationships between fashion and functionality, culture, aesthetics, politics, labor, identity, economy, and technology.
