I would love to see this photographed on some of the Indigenous weavers and collectors.....♡ What a breathtaking piece...stunningly beautiful. The skill of those weavers, to create this.....Im so glad these 2 gentlemen had the means and the passion to envisiage, and create such a project. I would like to know how many hours and how much it cost them to produce. Truly sublime .

I saw this in the V & A Museum in London. The question I had then remains unanswered - how much does the cape weigh?

As a weaver I can appreciate the time and work that went into making this beautiful garment. I'm glad they said that this was not a fashion statement. To commercialise something as rare as this would demean it.

I’m just curious how many of them survive in the wild later. I know spiders have slow metabolism and can go a while without eating, but orb weavers need a web to catch prey and if they’re already hungry upon being milked they’re done for.

This is gorgeous but couldn’t you find a model from Madagascar? I mean everything was produced there so I think putting it on a local model would have made it positively magical!

Completely entranced - what a gorgeous material!

I’d like to see some demonstrations of some of the qualities of the fiber. Strength and durability, cleaning quality, shrink proofnees, lightweightness, colorfastness? I imagine they are quite amazing. I’d just like to learn exactly what they are.

One of the crafts people should had the honor to be the model. It would have also look have looked even more beautiful on dark skin.

I have no words. Just watching your video on this feels like a high honor. Thank you. ❤

Well, what. Happens to it now? How much does it weigh? It looks beautiful...but can it been cleaned and how?

Now this is art. Pure snd simple. I would love to see it worn in person. Just to see how it moves and sounds, and how the light hits it. A garment truly comes alive when worn. To preserve it would of course limit how often it could be worn and in what conditions. Luckily we do have the medium of film to capture these moments on camera for the world to see. Oh I want to go see it so badly.

I never get like this at all but why didn't one of the Madagascar NATIVES wear the garment? They put it on a European woman. That was a very disappointing finish to such an exquisite display.

I wish you had a Malagasy native to model for the beautiful cape. To see it modeled on a woman not even related to the weavers' cultural geography is a major disservice in my eye.

Where will this garment be after the exhibit? Will it always be on view somewhere?

Beautiful, brought tears to my eyes.

Love a costume made out of this stuff to wear around the neighbourhood.

wait, how the hell do you catch 100,000,000 spiders?

It's like wearable gold

Beautiful yellow silk shirt upheld !

AMAZING BEAUTIFUL! I LOVE IT!

I would love to have a bed spread made out of this stuff. (a man can dream)

4:05 Simon looks at Nick thinking "Fuck is he talking about. He doesnt even know."

Those spiders better received free meals after

Why the hell is it that just because these two determined rich guys living in Madagascar orchestrated this whole thing - do we simply give ALL the credit for this robes' existence to the two of them alone? They had a TON of people in Madagascar out there collecting spiders and taking silk from spiders and setting up the looms and doing the weaving and embroidering in "the spidery" as it was called and yet all anybody says is that these two rich men "made" this robe. NO, THEY DID NOT!!! In fact, I would like to know what did they even actually physically DO at all themselves to make this robe happen? WHAT exactly did they ACTUALLY do? Did THEY collect spiders? Did THEY do the weaving? Or did they just design the robe and then pay for it all? Because if they didn't DO ANY ACTUAL WEAVING or leg work for this robe then the only credit they ought to have is credit for paying for designing and orchestrating its existence. I'm so damned sick and tired of every single time a reference to this robe is ever made ONLY ever seeing the names of these two men when we know for a fact that they were NOT the ones who were primarily involved in collecting the materials for or doing any of the embroidery or weaving which ACTUALLY created the garment! When an actual orchestra plays a sonata they don't ONLY CREDIT THE CONDUCTOR any time a recording of the song is played! I want to see ALL the names of the Madigascans who ACTUALLY did the work to create this piece attached to the piece itself. These rich guys can take a hike I don't care that they have enough money to make a name for themselves on the backs of the Madigascans they hired to actually do the work. If they really cared about supporting the Madigascans they took advantage of they would have used the infamy from creating this robe to create an industry so that the people who live there that they are clearly exploiting could use the skills they learned while working on this robe to make money for themselves and provide a rare and unique substance for other artists to utilize and buy. How much per single small spool do you think such a rare 'fiber ' could generate? I am certain that it would generate an incredible amount of money for the people who now know how to collect and process it because of the time they spent working on this robe- but do you think these guys care about the people they employed just for a short amount of time? No, the only person ever mentioned is the two of them and they never created any kind of platform for the Madagascans they used and exploited to create this 'wonder of the world' they've made themselves famous for. And the only names ever mentioned are the names of these two men. It's just exploitation, and that is just some privileged eletist BS. Adding insult to injury - once they had finished exploiting all these Madagascan nationals, many of them beautiful young women in their own right, who did they have model them damned thing!!!? That's right some white women - some fair-skinned fair-haired twiggy little stick figure who never had to work a hard day's labor or go hunting for f*cking SPIDERS in the FORREST to make some rich man's fantasy come true IN HER LIFE! Just a white anorexic waif barely a hair's breadth out of her own childhood to stand there and look pouty to a background of white colonial french "baroque" Esque architecture. Talk about a white privileged affluent male fantasy created on the backs of Africans none of whom are ever mentioned in the labor that created this famous one of a kind textile! It's mind-blowing. Imagine if these scumbags had created a contact for the "spidery" and all the Madagascans they exploited to make themselves famous, imagine if they had used the notoriety to create a thriving industry of raising these spiders and selling single spools of their threads at incredibly high prices which would have created a unique and high art value fiber for fine art pieces all over the world which would have supported these people who did all the work of going out and collecting millions of spiders over eight years for these two creeps and their fantasy project!? Imagine if it had created a situation that boosted the economy of Madagascar and helped to support people who then were able to help conservation efforts not only for the spiders there but all manner of animal in this world unique to Madagascar! Imagine if instead of some white child-woman waif as their model they had chosen an actual Madagascan woman from among the people who actually made the damn robe!!! Imagine if they had chosen an actual Madagascan background for the photoshoot! Imagine if they'd taken pictures of this robe in the actual forest where the spiders lived next to one of the spiders with a woman who actually went out every day collecting spiders for the robe!!!! But did these creeps do ANY of that? No. Because just like typical rich men who don't care at all about the people they exploit to get what they want, its just - all about them. Here are some names for you that these little blips never mention: Norosoa Ravelomahay Nathalie Robert, Martin Rakotoarimanana, Antoine Rakotoarinala. And those are the only other names I can find of the ACTUAL WORKERS who made this robe happen. But do we ever hear their names? Ever see their faces? No. Every exhibition every video clip only mentions the men with the money who employed them.

All the: “Ah, it is incredible light, it almost fly away…“ What is the weight of that cape?

So they kidnap spiders, force them to give up all their food catching web silk, then “release them back into nature” to starve, exhausted.

Is it still done in madagascar?

Odd that it was shown by a white model who had nothing to do with its production. Why not have it shown by the people who put in all those years of painstaking work to make this thing of beauty?

Im obsessed with the study spider silk

Incredible!

Who is the model and does she describe what it was like to wear the cape anywhere?

I wonder if there’s a way to mass produce this because this as a material could be used in so many things

I'd wear it. Looks glorious.

I was interested and listened for over two minutes before giving up the struggle to hear the words over the twanging music. Disappointing.

This is what I want my wedding dress to be made of

How much do you think it's worth?

If it doesnt harm the spiders,this is utterly mind-blowing.

Just amazing

Are you not potentially starting an 'ivory trade' for these spiders and their products? What have you done to prevent that, in Madagascar of all places! I'm surprised at David Attenborough for supporting you. You seem to have more money than sense.

Would this garment be costlier than gold?

I would love to use a T-shirt made of spider web.Maybe after some decades I'll have one

Can it stop a 7.62x51?

The next question for me is how can we replicate this and leave natures poor creature alone to live their lives?id love to work with something this glorious, but without disturbing the spiders life.

I understand there is a book about this, is it still for sale and where can I get it?

Why isn't there only a video that actually makes threads from spiders? Isn't it just a reproduction drawing and then replacing it with a normal golden thread? suspicious

how many spiders died because of this manifestation of human ego?

What happens to the spiders after milking the golden silk...do they get to go thread for themselves, is there silk left?

Fascinating. Exquisite. Startling. Superlative!

This is stronger than kevlar and steel right? So could it actually stop a bullet?

The white model is the anticlimax to this magical story. The story on Wired also attributed this discovery to French missionary Jacob Paul Comboué, but it is most likely that indigenous people already knew and practiced this form of weaving that Jacob had observed. This is a great starting point for research into the indigenous weaving practices of the Malay people.

Can you wash it?

Who paid for this? I'd be curious who funded this.

I am more amazed by the girl than the cape.

1.2 million spiders? I wonder how many of them were re-captures

Trác Tuyệt đến ngỡ ngàng ! Đời sao "ngộ" thế mà mình thì "già chiều"...

That's it I'll go to mars to live there

+10 to armour

There’s probably ethical questions intertwined with this story throughout but you can’t deny the creativity, ingenuity, dedication and persistence either.

I want to live and die in this cape

Little by little, bit by bit, can result in something much bigger than the parts. Who says hoarders are gnutts. I've ran into the webs of orb weavers, and another kind. From what I noticed about the strength different, Black or Brown Widow spider silk could be better than Kevlar, if it was easy to get it in bulk. That Web is one tough web compared to an Orb Weavers web.

The garment was gorgeous, but it looked bad on this model. It was too hard to find a brown-skinned person in Madagascar?

🤯

That’s probably bulletproof

Is it true after one day stolen this hard work garment

Why is this not modeled by one of the artisans? Why is this centered around white people when it is obviously not their heritage/practice/culture? Glad that someone is keeping this tradition alive, but this is quite a classic British colonialist approach.

most people find spiders creepy but when u see this the next time u see a spider ur not going to sqush it your going to captur it an let it go

hope both nicholas and simon get what they deserve

The time it take it want to be worth 15 to 20 million

And they made a poncho

A great way to create JOBS...Let's all go to Madagascar to collect golden orbs....or create Spider-Silk....Factories... So Beautiful!...What a wonderful creation!......It certainly should belong the the great museum....Unique creation...Wish everyone could see it....

I guess it was inevitable that the model was going to be white. Still sad and predictably colonialist. Britain don't learn.

When you go to war wearing that you gunna wipe Thanos

One day: Sire? "Yes?" Where the hell are the 1.2 million spiders? "...H-" We didn't even finish making the cape. "...Uh-" *Where the hell are they.* "..What do you mea-" *INCLUDING THE BIGGEST ONE.*

Áo này cũ rồi . ... ngày xưa SpiderMann đã mặc ! ra chợ trời VN thấy có ....

Traveling to Africa: using African spiders: harvesting using Africans and weaved it using Africans but when it comes to model it, well let's call an European model 🤔🤔🤔 typically coloniser's...

Độc là vì hiếm,nhưng trông cái áo dày cui như thế làm sao mà mát rượi như tơ tằm được. Nắng SG anh đi mà chợt mát bởi vì em mặc áo lụa Hà Đông (NS)

This gives me the same vibes as Cathy Hay's peacock dress project... They are not good vibes.

White talking head but dark weaving hands: tells a lot about the world we live in.

Magical?!! Men, not knowing HOW to frame the S A C R E D into mortal language.

How can I contact them ?

Why the f_ does there have to be music on this???! All of us middle-aged and older (plus some younger) people struggle with hearing well in situations when there is noise. We are a majority in the museum clientele.

Sad and cruel

⚖ *SEVERAL ⚖ REQUESTS ⚖ TO ⚖ WEIGH ⚖ IT, -- SO* _WEIGH ⚖ IT,_ *FOR ⚖ PETE'S ⚖ SAKE!!!* ⚖

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ? And Babylon, many times demolished, Who raised it up so many times ? In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ? Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go? Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them ? Over whom did the Caesars triumph ? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ? Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it, The drowning still cried out for their slaves. The young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone ? Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him ? Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down. Was he the only one to weep ? Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War. Who else won it ? Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors ? Every 10 years a great man. Who paid the bill ? So many reports. So many questions. From "Questions from a worker who reads"

getting milked for good

Beautiful but I would never wear it. My skin is itching just thinking about all those spiders😱

Classic westerner claiming the other countries product as theirs

next task guys: turn Grand Canyon into a swimming pool using only a tablespoon :)For God sakes, the ammount of work ans dedication that went into this project is uncomprehensible ! It's true that is unique (and I'm almost certain it will remain this way for a very long time) but still, can you imagine if some idiot douche robbs it (like it happend in France 200 years ago) or, even worse, it gets destroyed ?!? I can't imagine what you guys would do, seriously !

Not trying to hate on the specific model, but if you're going to display something worth millions of dollars, (priceless, really), couldn't you afford a more attractive model? The weird, heavy makeup and basic hair really brings down the expensive feeling

It’s sad that they spent three years constructing this garment, and a whole team of people were involved only for viewers to look past the spectacular garment and get upset over who modeled it.

What a waste

Actually, YOU are being "colonialist." How dare you presume to speak for the artisans! For all you know they may be happy to have their tradition showcased, and they appear quite happy in the video. The two men speaking are the creators of this robe. They created the actual design, they propelled the project, they, (along with the Museum) financed it, and they labored over the details for three years. They, not you, get to decide who wears it. Just because they let one model wear it does not mean they didn't let anyone else wear it. Your use of the term "white people" shows your racism. Singling anyone out because of the color of their skin is wrong.