The Moon Parka, as it’s called, is a special edition coat
made with Spider Silk.
North Face’s outlets in Japan will sell a special edition
“Moon Parka”. The Moon Parka is a gold-colored jacket based on the design of
its existing Antarctica parka, made out of synthetic spider silk, a
super-strong material developed by Spiber Inc.
Farming silk from spiders isn’t as simple as harvesting wool
from sheep, or milk from cows. It takes a lot of spiders a lot of time to
produce not a lot of silk. Synthetic spider silk may be the way of the
future.
On September 26, 2015, based on The North Face's Antarctica
Parka, Spiber created the world's first outerwear prototype made with their
spider fibroin-based protein material QMONOS. They call this historic prototype
the "Moon Parka." It appears that they are now closer to selling the jackets
to fortunate shoppers.
The North Face's Antarctica Parka is an outerwear jacket
designed to endure the harsh conditions and intense cold of the South Pole,
which the Moon Parka is designed to match. The QMONOS outer material is the
natural web color of the Golden Orb spider, and the almost unearthly glow
inspired us to dub the color "Moon Gold." The embroidered logos on the
jacket are also made from a black QMONOS.
Learn more about Spiber.
Visit The North Face website to learn more
about the company or visit the about
The North Face page on Apparel Search.
Learn more at the following news
articles:
Japanese
Spider Silk for Moon Parka (Bloomberg)
Another company working with spider thread is Bolt
Threads. They believe that answers to our most vexing problems can be found
in nature. Every day they are inspired by the amazing materials they work with,
and driven by the desire to turn these materials into incredible products. They
are planning to help change our clothes. Insects and spiders have the ability
to produce natural silk fibers with remarkable properties including high tensile
strength, elasticity, durability and softness. At Bolt Threads, they are
developing new technology to replicate this amazing silk production process
sustainably on a very large scale. They study silk proteins found in nature to
determine what gives them their incredible properties. They develop proteins
inspired by these natural silks by putting genes into yeast. They take the silk
proteins and spin them into fibers. They then knit or weave the fibers into
garments.
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