Anke Domaske, image courtesy QMilk
My ears have been burning all day over the latest drama in the fashion world. The Huffington Post reported today that a German fashion designer, Anke Domaske, is claiming to have invented milk fiber. Luckily, they had my heavily researched blog post to take down the ludicrous claims of Mademoiselle Chi-Chi.
Now, to give Anke Domaske some credit here, she does have a background in biology as well as fashion design. Her milk fiber is being created in a factory right in Germany and she says that her and her team worked for years on the formula perfecting how to turn sour milk into fabric.
So the way her company processes and makes fabric out of milk could slightly differ from the processes outlined in all of the public scientific articles I’ve read. Or perhaps she just wanted to reinvent the wheel, so she created the exact same product from scratch, instead of getting the recipe from one of the many mills in China I referenced in my last article.
But to claim that you invented milk fiber in the last five years or so and to boost that your product is brand new and innovative is just absurd, especially considering humans have had the ability to make products from the proteins in milk since the Ancient Egyptians. And as for fabric made from milk itself? Well, maybe the fashion world considers off-the-rack, mass-produced clothing déclassé, but really, all of those vintage dresses from the 1930s and 40s is all the proof you need that milk fiber has been around long before Anke came on the scene, and the many websites selling milk fiber and fabric products takes us right up to the present.
Anke apparently told the BBC in a radio interview that her product was all-natural and eco-friendly because she doesn’t use chemicals to make it, blend it with AN, and she only uses milk that is being “thrown away,” as opposed to owning her own herd of dairy cows. I’m not sure how she can get away with not using any chemicals at all, since she is turning a liquid into a solid, nor do I understand how she could make her products strong enough without introducing a blend, since this was the problem with milk clothing in the first place, but then, I’m not a chemist.
As for Anke? She says that she wants to make clothing out of milk fiber the next big thing, and thinks everyone should be wearing milk fabrics in the future. Nice dream, Anke. I really doubt that she is going to find enough sour milk just being “tossed out” to make her fabric. The reason milk fiber isn’t widespread? Because it takes take about 100 pounds of skim milk to make 3 pounds of milk fiber. Chew on that cud.
Exchanging Fire 