用衛生紙做的婚紗，用垃圾袋做的時裝……用特殊面料做衣服早就不是什么新鮮事兒，但是完全用天然樹葉做成的禮服，你見過嗎？我們都知道，樹葉采摘下來很快就會枯萎，而干枯的樹葉一碰就碎，這樣脆弱的材料要如何縫制成裙子呢？來看看中國大學生是怎么創造奇跡的吧！

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.
中國合肥大學的四名二年級學生最近證明了一個事實：你不必花大錢買高檔禮服也可以看起來很漂亮。你可以自己做禮服，一分錢也不用花，只需用樹葉就行了。

Photos of the stunning leaf dress have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media for about a week, and people still can’t stop gushing over them.
這條美麗樹葉裙的照片在社交媒體上已經火了一個星期，至今人們仍贊不絕口。

The team behind the unique 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.
這條獨一無二的裙子背后的團隊——兩個女孩和兩個男孩——是在六個月前想出這個創意的。當時他們正在想一個有趣的項目，準備參加合肥大學一年一度的動植物標本制作大賽。有一次，兩個女生興致勃勃地談論起范冰冰在戛納電影節上的龍袍裙有多么驚艷，其中一個女生建議大家可以試著用樹葉做出這條裙子。他們征求了老師的意見，盡管老師覺得這個項目太難了，但四個學生還是打算做下去。

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 the 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.
在研究出用樹葉作為面料的最佳方式和畫好裙子的設計圖后，四個學生就開始收集樹葉。有些樹葉在校園里很容易找到，但有些樹葉，比如廣玉蘭樹葉，校園里就沒有，為了收集這些葉子他們還特地去了天柱山。

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 peeled away, leaving only the “skeleton” of the leaf, a thin film with all the intricate veins left intact.
為了確保這些收集來的葉子不會枯萎或腐爛，這些學生把葉子放在堿水和蘇打水中煮兩個小時來去除葉肉。這樣能讓葉肉更容易剝離，留下來的只有葉子的“骨架”，一張脈絡完整的薄膜。

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 a perfect formula.
這個做起來比聽起來難得多，因為四個學生要努力把堿水和蘇打水的比例以及煮沸的時間控制得剛剛好，還要確保葉肉可以輕松剝離，而不會損壞葉子的骨架。通過反復的試驗，在老師的指導下，他們終于得出了完美的配方。

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.
這四名生物技術專業的學生只能在課后和周末做這條特別的裙子，所以他們花了將近四個月時間才完成。盡管耗時相當長，但是當其中一個女孩終于可以穿上這條樹葉裙向大家展示時，一切都值了。他們把這條裙子在不同制作階段的照片上傳到網上，結果樹葉裙瞬間就走紅了。

英文來源：odditycentral
圖片來源：新浪微博
翻譯&編輯：丹妮