Largest item of clothing woven from spider silk

- Who
- Nicholas Godley, Simon Peers, Spider silk cape
- What
- 7.48 square metre(s)
- Where
- Madagascar
- When
- 2012
The largest spider-silk garment is a cape that was designed by Simon Peers (UK) and Nicholas Godley (USA) and made in Madagascar. The cape was made with 7.48 m2 (81 sq ft) of woven spider-silk cloth, spun from the silk of the golden orb-weaver spider, and embroidered with spider-silk thread. The finished item weighed 1,896 grams. It was put on public display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK, in January 2012.
The process of making this garment was extraordinarily labour intensive and time consuming. A workforce of around 80 people, led by the head of "the Spidery" Norosoa Ravelomahay, was required just to gather the spiders from the forests of Madagascar and release them once they had been milked for silk. It's estimated that around 1.2 million spiders contributed to the project, and each spider produced around 25–30 metres of silk before being released.
The spiders were collected together in groups of 24 to produce a 24-strand thread, which was strong enough to be used for textiles. The threads were then affixed to hand-operated looms and woven into cloth with traditional Madagascan patterns. The shiny golden yellow of the resulting fabric is the natural colour of the orb-weaver's silk, and was not dyed or treated in any way.