Framing Bacterial Cellulose at the Skin Interface: Comfort, Care, and Skin Wellness in Biodesign

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is increasingly explored in biodesign as a wearable material at the skin interface. Produced by acetic acid bacteria such as Komagataeibacter xylinus, BC has a hydrated nanofibrillar structure and conformability that support direct skin-contact applications. Yet its articulation as a skin-interface wearable remains unsettled. Similar terms carry different evidentiary weight across design research, textile engineering, and biomedicine. This study uses cross- disciplinary qualitative comparative case mapping across 20 cases, organised into two sets. Set A provides a comparative reference set of textile-situated biobased wearable materials; Set B examines BC at the skin interface in biodesign. The comparison is discursive: stabilised textile-comfort vocabulary shifts within emerging BC skin-interface articulation. The paper offers a three-pillar analytical scaffold of comfort, care, and skin wellness, with skin health treated as a boundary term. Supported by a working glossary, the analysis clarifies how BC moves across these claims without treating them as equivalent.