Meet the Woman Who Wants to Grow Clothing in a Lab

Fashion designers don't usually give tours of biology laboratories, but on a rainy day this fall, deep in an industrial complex along the Brooklyn waterfront, Suzanne Lee guides me through the warren of labs that make up Modern Meadow. Lee recently joined the biotech start-up as its creative director. Beneath her white lab coat she wears leather pants and a neoprene shirt with a lightning bolt. When I ask what exactly a creative director of a biotech start-up does, she points to a plastic bracelet that encases the husks of three beetles. "Nature is the best designer," she says.