Behold! This Gown Is Made Of Silk Extracted From Spiders

A cape created from golden silk spun by more than a million spiders is going on display this week and it took more than four years to make the items from the silk of 1.2 million female golden orb spiders, native to Madagascar.

The hand-woven garment is being shown at London's Victoria and Albert Museum alongside the Golden Spider Silk, a four-metre long piece of brocaded fabric.

Spiders are collected every morning before silk is extracted from them by trained handlers. They are not harmed in the process and are returned to the wild at the end of each day.

The last known spider silk textile was made for an exhibition in Paris in 1900 but no examples remain.