The world's first-ever bag made from Mylo, a vegan mushroom leather, made its debut on the runway.
Luxury fashion brand and Icon Stella McCartney created the bag, the Stella McCartney Frame.
It first appeared in the Paris Fashion Week as part of the brand's Summer 2022 collection presentation this week. The show's main message was that ‘mushrooms are the future of fashion, a stated Stella McCartney in a press release.
Mylo is animal-free leather made from mycelium. Mycelium is a network of intertwined fungal threads, essential to the ecosystem and infinitely renewable.
Bolt Threads a technological material company engineered mycelium into a material, later named Mylo.
Mylo is certified bio-based, which means all its ingredients are found in nature. It's soft, flexible, and has the appearance of real leather.
Researchers developed Mylo by reproducing mycelium in a lab using decaying leaves, bark, or compost, water, air, and 100 percent renewable energy. The process takes a few days, rather than the years it takes to produce animal leather.
A Stella McCartney press release noted that it takes to produce a kilogram of leather 17,000 liters of water are used.
Stella McCartney's new Frayme bag features the vegan Mylo, a recycled aluminum chain strap, and a zamac medallion.
“For my Summer 2022 collection, I was so inspired by fungi and their incredible potential for saving our planet – and the Frayme Mylo embodies that hope for the future,”
“Our long-time partners at Bolt Threads and I have a shared passion for material innovation and launching a luxury handbag made from Mylo mycelium leather is a landmark moment not only for us, but the world. What you see on the runway today is the conscious fashion industry of tomorrow,”
Stella McCartney,
Dan Widmaier, Founder, and CEO of Bolt Threads said Mylo was created as growing demand for environmentally friendly materials.
Stella McCartney debuted its first vegan luxury bag in 2009 named the Falabella tote. Since then the company sold more than one million pieces, preventing the deaths of an estimated 400,000 cows.
“It's the future of all of us, otherwise we have no future,” McCartney said.
“I'm hoping it's the future of fashion, I'm desperately trying to open everyone's minds to a different way of working. And I'm trying to show that there's no less luxury in what I present in my shows and there's no less durability and desirability.”
Speaking about mycelium, McCartney explained how scientists can mix the final product into various directions. For example, mycelium materials can be created to be thicker or thinner, or they can be sprayed onto other fabrics.
“You can play around, there's so much you can do,” she said. “It's at the forefront really of the new tomorrow of fashion I hope”
