Lab-Grown Fabric

As its name declares, Literally Cotton is identical, on a cellular level, to the material humans have grown for clothing over millennia. But it isn’t grown the conventional way, which can contribute to deforestation and use significant amounts of water and chemicals. Galy's version is cell-cultured cotton, which begins as a cellular sample from a farm-grown plant. The cells then multiply in a succession of increasingly large fermentation vessels in a process analogous to brewing beer. The process uses significantly fewer resources and produces more consistent results than farmed cotton. "Cellular agriculture offers the best way to address environmental challenges at scale while producing a material with the same characteristics as traditional cotton," says Galy founder Luciano Bueno. "With all due respect to agriculture, we believe we can produce the same thing in a lab facility, better." It’s not yet commercially available, but interest is already high—Galy closed a $33 million funding round in September, and Inditex, parent company of fast fashion giant Zara, acquired a stake in the company this year.