Mimicking the structures found on butterfly wings, the fabric morphotex was used by Australian designer Donna Sgro in the dress she submitted to the Trash Fashion exhibition at Antenna, a science gallery at London’s Science Museum. (I previously posted about this show in Bacteria as couture and transgenic salmon?)

According to Jasmic Malik Chua’s article at Ecouterre,

… designer Donna Sgro fashioned the frock from the Morphotex, a nanotechnology-based, structurally colored fiber that mimics the microscopic structure of the Morpho butterfly’s wings, which despite lacking color, appear a shimmery cobalt blue. Manufactured by Teijin in Japan, Morphotex requires no dyes or pigments, nor the prodigious amount of water and energy used in conventional dyeing.

Here’s a detail of the dress from one of the many images available at Ecouterre,

Donna Sgro’s morphotext dress for Trash Fashion

This certainly sounds like a promising development. You can find some information about the product morphotex here at AskNature where you’ll find details including a patent number. Teijin’s (the manufacturer) English language website is here. Donna Sgro’s website is here.

You can find London’s Science Museum website here but I had a hard time finding anything more than this about Trash Fashion on their site.