Salmon Skin Bikinis?

An elaborate example of waste not, want not goes into Chilean fashion designer Claudia Escobar’s exotic salmon skin bikinis.

Escobar saw not only a source of cheap raw material in the masses of salmon skin discarded worldwide every year, she also saw the opportunity a source for helping the poor, making money and giving life to her creative talents.

The Lycra-trimmed, ultra-mini salmon-skin bikini sells for about 250 pounds ($494.9) and a pair of trousers fetches around 750 pounds, with half of the sale value going to workers, after paying off the negligible amount of overhead.

The 37-year old innovative designer says she is using fashion as a tool to help women internationally overcome poverty by taking traditional, local materials and molding them into high-priced luxury items. She has worked with Mapuche Indians in South America and women in Senegal where she sent them a technique for using fish skins based on their own method of treating goatskins.

"Many people who lived near rivers and oceans have used fish throughout history. It's not my original idea," she said, speaking in Edinburgh's port area. "It's amazing, it's a used product and you transform it into a product with added value."

Escobar is planning to launch another line, also based on local materials, picking up wool shed by sheep in the Scottish islands and has already started to recruit people with knowledge of traditional knitting techniques.