Sweet style

When I learned that a recent forum in Toronto featured sugar based clothing I have to admit my mind automatically re-routed to Naughtysville, where edible knickers and other such unmentionables are the order of the day. But those Canadians have a whole new spin on the concept.
Word is that models have been strutting Toronto catwalks in designer clothes made from fermented sugar as part of the international biotech conference, whose purpose was to "make green sexy".
I've always thought green was sexy and frankly don't see the need for a conference to prove the point. Just look at Robin Hood's green tights, or Gwyneth Paltrow who - for reasons I never fully understood - wore nothing but shades of emerald in the movie version of "Great Expectations".
My first crush was on the Jolly Green Giant for God's sake. JGG was a mythical figure somehow corralled into selling tinned peas and beans in the UK. He was green all over, but apart from that very dashing, especially that loincloth/toga type garment he wore that appeared to be made from Astroturf.
What? Not that kind of green? Ah yes, we're talking serious green, sustainable green, good green. Tree hugging green. Oops! So wrong of me to go there. This is precisely the kind of image that green no longer wishes to promote, which is why some fairly glitzy and decidedly many-hued though not green designers had been asked to contribute to the Toronto extravaganza.
We're talking Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Elisa Jimenez and others, who had created a veritable sweetie shop of wearable confections, including a strapless beige ball gown, a cream baby-doll dress with ribbon and sheer overlay, and a pink and yellow taffeta skirt with a silver recycled polyester bustier.
Apparently the clothes are considerably more durable than anything you'd find on ediblelingerie.com, and are made from polymer; in fact I must say the further I look into it, the more it starts to sound about as sexy as a Steve Coogan poster.
In order to create the polymer, sugar is fermented into lactic acid, then that is converted into lactide, which then becomes PLA, or polymer, that can be made to have the appearance of silk, polyester, leather or elastic.
Apparently it only takes a matter of hours.
I was making fudge last night and I must say I was sorely tempted to give it a go. Just think of the possibilities. Looking for that perfect little black dress? Instead of traipsing round the shops like a zombie, you could grab three packs of Castor sugar from your local IGA and away you'd go. And if somehow it all went to pot in the fermentation process you could always drink your aborted outfit. But I guess "don't try this at home" is the best mantra to follow in this case. I'll leave sugar science to the scientists and stick to long bouts of retail, regular lolly bags and letting the moths take care of eating my lingerie.