At our sister blog, Brighter Products, we cover consumer goods ranging from fashion to wine, so we were excited when we spotted the news that researchers at the University of Western Australia had found a way to create clothing from wine and beer. The fabric is the end result of some processes that begin with “a skin-like rubbery layer covering a vat of wine that was contaminated with Acetobacter bacteria.”

What pushed this over into NameAward territory was the realization that, if they ever manage to get this going on a commercial scale, they’ll need a name and brand that will convince people to don clothes made from what could be described as an upscale cousin of pond scum.

Mysophobic..and proud of it!

We think these guys got off to a good start, by calling the new fabric Micro’be’. Funny punctuation is always a risky move in a name, but this one seems to cue pronunciation as “micro-bee” rather than “mike-robe”. It does at least start the process of imparting information about the provenance of this new product. Let’s face it: you really don’t want to be the guy at the returns counter when some trendies find out how this was made after they bought it. Looks like some similar thinking went into the slogan these characters have already cooked up: ‘Microbes à la mode’.

Some free marketing advice to our friends Down Under: this really will pose a challenge when you try to go mainstream and mass-market so we suggest “casting against type” for your celebrity endorser—figuring if Howie Mandel will wear it, anyone will. But there might not be enough Australian dollars in circulation to persuade the world’s most notorious mysophobe to slip into an outfit made of Micro’be’.

–Greg Marus