Meet the Vegan Leather Makers That Have Already Won Fashion’s Approval

From architecturaldigest.com

Alternative leathers made from mushrooms, apples, cactus, and more are becoming accessible

With sustainability and eco-friendliness en vogue in the fashion industry, iconic brands continue to add new vegan leather makers to their source Rolodexes. From H&M’s sustainable collection featuring cactus leather to Stella McCartney’s garments made of mushroom leather, apparel and luxury goods powerhouses seem to be at the faux-front of this bio-based materials movement. And as goes fashion, so go interiors. AD PRO takes a closer look at some of these vegan materials and the companies ready to offset the traditional leathercraft landscape.

V-Textile 

Founded five years ago in Milan, Vegea develops better-for-the-world alternatives to synthetic and animal-based materials for fashion, furniture, packaging, and transportation. Among the manufacturer’s natural line is a leather substitute, V-Textile, which recycles by-products of the Italian wine industry. Last year, the company collaborated with French sportswear brand Le Coq Sportif to create a line of Vegetal sneakers. As a nod to the innovation, each shoe is marked with the vintage of the harvested grape used to produce the material.

Piñatex

Produced by London-based certified B Corp Ananas Anam, Piñatex is an all-natural material made from pineapple leaf fibres as an alternative to leather and petroleum-based textiles. The pineapple leaves—sourced from the Philippines, where they’re an agricultural by-product—are processed to extract fibres that are then sustainably manufactured into a nonwoven substrate. From there, the material travels to Spain, where it’s further refined and distributed globally.

Ananas Anam’s Piñatex upholsters seating at Restaurant Ark in Copenhagen.

 Photo courtesy Ananas Anam

Resulting in a lightweight, versatile vegan leather, Piñatex’s process requires no additional land, water, or chemicals in its production. With collections spanning the gamut of colour, texture, and even performance, the maker has garnered partnerships with Paul Smith, Hugo Boss, and Paolo Carzana, among others.

Desserto

On a 14-acre farm in Zacatecas, Mexico, Adriano Di Marti harvests the gem of its natural leather: nopal, or cactus. Dubbed Desserto, the plant-based material is partially biodegradable, made without any toxic chemicals, and compliant with all the technical specifications required by the fashion, leather goods, and furniture industries. Plus, it only takes three cactus leaves to produce one linear meter of Desserto. The hard work is being recognized: In March, PETA awarded Adriano Di Marti the Compassionate Company Award for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and H&M debuted Science Story, a sustainable fashion collection featuring soft, smooth Desserto bio-based leather.

Mylo 

Underfoot, mycelium is an ecological apparatus that helps break down organic matter and deliver nutrients to plant life. At Emeryville, California–based company Bolt Threads, the renewable resource is engineered with a medley of organic matter that then gets tanned and dyed to create Mylo, a soft yet durable leather alternative that has already attracted interest from fashion labels.

Bolt Threads’ Mylo mushroom leather made its fashion garment debut in Stella McCartney’s latest runway show.

 Photo courtesy Bolt Threads

Most recently, the company partnered with Stella McCartney to debut the first-ever Mylo garments, adding to a collaboration with Adidas on its Stan Smith Mylo sneakers. 

Fleather

When Ankit Agarwal noticed that temple-flower waste—derived from religious Indian flower offering that generates some 8 million tons of flora annually—was polluting the major waterways in the region, he sought to find a better use of the remnants. Cue Phool.co, which relies on “flowercycling technology” to produce a range of biodegradable products including Fleather, a waste-free plant-based leather alternative.

Phool.co’s Fleather helps keep the Ganges river clean of flower waste

AppleSkin

Developed in northern Italy’s Tyrol region, known for its sweeping apple orchards, Frumat’s AppleSkin faux leather recycles the fruit’s discarded peels and cores. The waste is processed to create a cellulose-based material, which comes in an array of vibrant colours, textures, and thicknesses.

Frumat uses agricultural byproducts to create its AppleSkin leather.

 Photo courtesy Luxtra

The maker’s fashionable collaborators include accessories brand Luxtra, which has created handbags using AppleSkin. The manufacturer’s Apple Paper is also widely used in the production of stationery, tissue, and packaging materials.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/meet-the-vegan-leather-makers-that-have-already-won-fashions-approval