The 50 Best Inventions of 2010

Most of us toss those annoying plastic price-tag fasteners (above right) without a second thought, but Maison Martin Margiela Artisanal's coat gives 29,000 of them a new life. The French avant-garde fashion house — known for transforming shoelaces, combs and wigs into couture dresses — spent 42 hours embroidering the fasteners in a herringbone pattern on a leather coat, turning the disposable into a fashion statement: fake fake fur. "It's a message about sustainability, but done with humor," says Matilda McQuaid, a curator at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, "saying we should look at reusing our resources. We need to stop and think about what we immediately discard."