Spiber and The North Face develop synthetic spider-silk parka
09/11/2015
Spiber, a specialist in synthetic spider-silk type materials, is calling the new parka “the world’s first outerwear prototype made with Qmonos”, a spider fibroin-based protein material.
The garment is based on The North Face’s Antarctica parka, a jacket designed to endure the harsh conditions and intense cold of the South Pole. The Moon Parka, which is currently on tour around The North Face retail sites in different Japanese cities, is designed to match these performance levels. It has the colour of the web of the golden orb spider, which Spiber has dubbed “moon gold”, describing it as having an “almost unearthly glow”. The embroidered logos are also made from a black Qmonos.
During the prototyping process, Spiber conducted extensive trials to find “the perfect threads” for the spinning, twisting, weaving, and sewing processes and gained what it has called “great insight into the challenges that we still face on the road to mass production”.
It insists that the countdown to practical application for synthetic protein materials has begun.
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