Mushroom Leather: Organically Fashionable Fungi
Could mushroom leather be the answer to fashion’s sustainability crisis?
Mushroom leather sounds like something straight out of a Sci-Fi novel–perhaps from a far-distant utopia where greenhouse emissions are net-zero and fashion production is sustainable and harmless to the environment.
Several bio-forward companies and designers have been creating products with this mushroom leather. Is it for the average consumer or is it set to remain on the fringes of high-end and conceptual design?
Mylo is a company that describes their mycelium-based leather as “unleather”. On their website, they define Unleather as, “The radical act of choosing products made sustainably with infinitely renewable mycelium over animal and synthetic-based materials.”
Their slogan in crisp, bold text is as sleek and intelligent as the rest of their website; “FROM THE EARTH, FOR THE FUTURE.”
They are already working with high-profile designers such as Adidas, Lululemon, and Stella McCartney.
Stella McCartney has been iconically leather-free since her brand’s launch in 2001. Stella has been a lifelong vegetarian and has been fur, leather, and animal product-free in all of her designs, so a sustainable and organic textile seems like a perfect next step for the British forward-thinker. She has been working with Bolt Threads since 2018.
McCartney’s work with Bolt Threads and Mylo has also been worn by the likes of Paris Jackson.
Lululemon debuted a conceptual yoga mat from the material. The brand also released a small collection featuring Mylo.
So how do mushrooms become leather? In 2013, a Danish product designer Jonas Edvard first developed an organic mushroom material called MYX. The material is grown into shape during a period of 2–3 weeks where the mycelium grows to build a fibrous textile.
Mycelium is the vegetative network of fine filaments that connects mushrooms together. MYX was discovered during oyster mushroom harvests where Edvard found that the remaining material could be shaped and dried out.
But mushroom leather has worked its’ way onto designer tables and into luxury brands, thanks to eco-smart startups passionate about making fashion more sustainable.
Another brand, MycoWorks, is a California-based biotech company. They have created an eco-friendly, vegan leather derived from the same mycelium threads, but grown in a more refined way to create a dense, close-to-leathered structure that the threads growing naturally could not create alone.
This added edge of refined engineering allows designers to have hand-grown sheets of the material, cutting down on waste and scrap fabric. Hermès has created a variation of the Victoria bag with MycoWorks’ material, known as Fine Mycelium. The Victoria bag is still available in calf leather.
Other mushroom leather companies and brands include Brodo, an Indonesian sneaker company with MYLEA.
It will be interesting to see down the line how mushroom leather compares in terms of product lifespan versus genuine leather. After all, consumers want products and sustainable options that last.
Though cow leather remains at the top of the list of least sustainable materials as livestock alone makes up 15% of the greenhouse gas emissions, some vegan leathers still remain damaging to the environment, full of plastics and synthetics. Mushroom leather is carbon neutral and organic, not to mention an industry with closed-loop potential, meaning it could be created entirely from post-consumer waste.
Are there any average-consumer products available in mushroom leather? When can we expect mushroom leather to make an appearance on shelves rather than runways? Most mushroom-based leathers go toe-to-toe in cost per yard against exotic leathers.
However logical the switch to vegan leather may be, mushroom leather seems to be part of the perfectly sustainable utopia that is just out of reach. Animal leather remains a 100 billion-dollar-a-year industry, while vegan leather is approximated at 26 billion. Of the $100 billion industry of animal leather, bovine leather makes up 60% (via grandviewresearch.com).
