Lab-grown leathers

After the (many) plantbased alternatives to leather, laboratory-grown leathers now seem to be of interest to fashion and luxury brands.

American start-up VitroLabs Inc has just raised $46 million (about R735 million) to build and scale the world’s first pilot production of cell-cultivated leather.

Kering is one of the investors and partners in this innovative solution. From pineapple and mushroom to apple, grape, cactus, banana and kombucha, there’s no end to the fruit, vegetables and plants now being used to make handbags and shoes that are more respectful of the planet and of animal welfare.

These plant-based leathers – although not really leathers at all – could today be overshadowed by a new material whose appearance and technical characteristics promise to be as close as possible to those of the real thing.

And that material is lab-grown leather, cultivated in laboratories from cells of animal origin.

It’s an important step forwards. The aim is to limit environmental impacts and improve animal welfare. There has been an explosion of companies that are developing alternative materials to leather.

“However, at VitroLabs, our cultivated animal leather preserves the biological characteristics that the industry, craftsmen, and consumers know and love about leather, while eliminating the most environmentally and ethically detrimental aspects of the conventional leather manufacturing process associated with its sourcing,” says Ingvar Helgason, CEO and co-founder of the start-up.

This is not the first time that lab-grown leather has been in the spotlight.

A company called Modern Meadow has been working on the subject for many years, but VitroLabs would be the first start-up to start producing it on a larger scale. Not surprisingly, well-known names like Leonardo DiCaprio are among the investors.

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