Spiber and North Face Japan create first readily-available spider silk jacket www.dezeen.com

Biotech start-up Spiber and The North Face's Japanese distributor Goldwin have created the first mass-manufactured jacket made from synthetic spider silk.
However, due to the cannibalistic nature of spiders, it has been impossible to mass-produce spider silk in the same way as other animal by-products.
"We set our eyes upon microbial fermentation as the method to produce spider silk proteins," said Meyer.
"We quickly realised that natural spider silk might be great for some applications, but not so great for others," Meyer recalled.
Crucially, this latest version of the parka does not then rely on a one-to-one replication of spider silk proteins.