Four sophomore students at the University of Hefei in eastern China, recently proved that you don’t have to spend a small fortune on a designer dress to look stunning. You can make it yourself, for free, using only plant leaves.

The team behind the stunning leaf dress — two girls and two boys — got the idea for it over six months ago while trying to come up with an interesting project for the annual Animal and Plant Specimen Contest at the University of Hefei. During that time, the girls couldn’t stop talking about how gorgeous the dress worn by Chinese actress Fan Bingbing at the Cannes Festival looked, and one of them suggested they try to recreate it out of plant leaves. They ran the idea by their teacher, and even though he considered it difficult to pull off, they went with it anyway.

After researching the best way to use plant leaves as fabric, and coming up with a design for their dress, the four students started collecting leaves. Some species were readily available on campus, but others like magnolia leaves were not, so they had to travel to Tianzhu Mountain to collect them.

To ensure that the collected leaves didn’t shrivel or rot, the students removed the flesh by boiling them in alkali and sodium carbonate solution for about two hours. This made the flesh easier to be peeled away, leaving only the “skeleton” of the leaf, a thin film with all the intricate veins intact.

This was much harder than it sounds, as the four students struggled to get the proportions of alkali and sodium carbonate and the boiling time just right, to ensure that the flesh could be easily removed without damaging the skeleton of the leaf. Through trial and error and with their teacher’s guidance they were able to come up with the perfect formula.

The four science and biotechnology students could only work on their special dress after classes and on weekends, so it took them nearly four months to complete. That’s a pretty long time, but it all paid off when one of the girls got to finally put on the leaf dress and show it off to everyone. They posted photos of it, at various stages, online, and it went viral almost instantly.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【做成】zuòchéng pull off carry out despite difficulties, accomplish successfully against odds

【被疯转】bèi fēngzhuǎn go viral spread quickly and widely on the Internet through social media and email

中国合肥大学的四名二年级学生最近证明了一个事实：你不必花钱买高档礼服也可以看起来很漂亮。你可以自己做礼服，一分钱也不用花，用树叶就行了。

这条美丽树叶裙背后的团队 —— 两个女孩和两个男孩 —— 是六个月前想出这个创意的。当时他们正在想一个有趣的项目，准备参加合肥大学一年一度的动植物标本制作大赛。那一阵，两个女生兴致勃勃地谈论范冰冰在戛纳电影节上的裙子多么惊艳，其中一个女生建议大家可以试着用树叶做出这条裙子。他们征求了老师的意见，尽管老师觉得这个项目太难了，但四个学生还是打算做下去。

在研究出用树叶作为面料的最佳方式和画好裙子的设计图后，四个学生就开始收集树叶。有些树叶在校园里很容易找到，但有些树叶，比如广玉兰树叶，校园里就没有，为了收集这些叶子他们还特地去了天柱山。

为了确保这些收集来的叶子不会枯萎或腐烂，这些学生把叶子放在碱水和苏打水中煮两个小时来去除叶肉。这样能让叶肉更容易剥离，留下来的只有叶子的“骨架”，一张脉络完整的薄膜。

这个做起来比听起来难得多，因为四个学生要努力把碱水和苏打水的比例以及煮沸的时间控制得刚刚好，还要确保叶肉可以轻松剥离，而不会损坏叶子的骨架。通过反复的试验，在老师的指导下，他们终于得出了完美的配方。

这四名生物技术专业的学生只能在课后和周末做这条特别的裙子，所以他们花了将近四个月时间才完成。尽管耗时相当长，但是当其中一个女孩终于可以穿上这条树叶裙向大家展示时，一切都值了。他们把这条裙子在不同制作阶段的照片上传到网上，树叶裙瞬间就走红了。

(Chinadaily.com.cn)