MICROBE DESIGNS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 68, 13 December 1932, Page 4

MICROBE DESIGNS

Weird Dresses in Paris

(By Mavis.) Dominion Special Service. London, Sept. 14. Some of the women walking along the Champs Elysees in Paris are wearing frocks with weird designs. The fine tracing seems the dream of a madman, something too fabulous for the human imagination. As a matter of fact, it is. They weren't imagined at all. Just photographed. The designs are the microscopic patterns of diseased tissues, microbes, and drugs. Mme. Guillot, a French scientist, discovered beauty in the microbes that moved under her microscope. So she photographed them to be used as patterns for dress materials and wallpaper. She sent the photographs to textile designers, without telling them what the pictures represented, and the unusual patterns were instantly put into cloth, made into frocks, and worn ou the street.

One of the designs, called “dope silk,” Is copied faithfully from the magnified crystal of one of the opium derivatives. Cyanide and citric acid crystal are other origins of new designs.