Long considered the last word in luxury, reports that Hermès had moved in on mycelium earlier this year suddenly added a certain sheen to the biomaterial which, for many, had not been there before. World Leather unpicks the fungal threads.

“Hermès’ engagement with use of Sylvania is quite limited to partial use in one man’s bag design,” New York-based head of communications at luxury goods house Hermès, Peter Malachi, tells World Leather over email. True. Considering the clamour since Sylvania’s unveiling this past March, though, one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. So, what is Sylvania - and why has it got some in the leather industry (and beyond) a little shrill?

Under the microscope

Sylvania started life inside a lab in Emeryville, roughly 10 miles or 16 kilometres from San Francisco. Though exclusive to Hermès of Paris and tanned and finished in the label’s French leatherworking ateliers, the new material has deep roots in Californian startup MycoWorks’ patented Fine Mycelium biotechnology. The brand’s Victoria bag, to which Mr Malachi refers above, is the first object to have been (partly) made with Fine Mycelium, according to MycoWorks. As its name would suggest, Fine Mycelium is derived from mycelium, sometimes described as a network of filament fungal threads which can grow, or ‘fruit’, to form mushrooms. In short, Sylvania is a variation of this proprietary biomaterial.

Given Hermès’s substantial leathergoods heritage, journalists have been quick to stir the pot, fast to paint a picture of luxury’s supposed shift away from leather to ‘shrooms (some even, handily, describing this as a “boom”). Yet, other materials incorporated in this version of the Victoria include the brand’s own H plume canvas and, significantly, Evercalf calfskin. Hence, the bag is by design not anti-leather and, as confirmed to the press at the time of Sylvania’s initial reveal, leather has not been and will not be replaced by the house. Rather, Hermès has only since signalled that it very much remains a key ingredient. In fact, the brand’s public strategy for Sylvania has been markedly more conservative in its approach than that of MycoWorks, which displays its technical association with the house prominently on the homepage of its website.

“We are not communicating specifically on our use of new materials or third-party production suppliers,” Mr Malachi explains to us. “New materials [such as Sylvania] are a consistent and continued focus of our innovation department, which is engaged in testing and exploring new material technologies across all Hermès collections.” The brand’s ‘experiments’ are not limited to leather or leathergoods, then. As if to further allay any sprouting concerns from among the leather industry, information provided by MycoWorks’ public relations team is similarly firm. Its materials are expressly not “mushroom leather”, “vegan leather” or “plant-based leather”, the company says. Separately, it adds that it does not consider Fine Mycelium a replacement, but instead a “completely new material with its own characteristics”.

The meaning of mycelium

Precisely what mycelium-derived materials are and are not, and what they are imagined to be, seems to be the cause of abject squeamishness for some. Sincere bewilderment for others. Yet, it is little wonder, as the terminology, for one, is not uniform and could even be said to inspire misinformation. For every Reishi (a MycoWorks-made material formed from Fine Mycelium) there is a Mylo or a Mylea, for example, each of which differs from the other in terms of the language used to describe it. Nobody from Mylo or its parent Bolt Threads, also headquartered in Emeryville, was available to comment for this article, whereas Mycotech Lab, the Indonesian startup behind “tempeh-inspired” and mycelium-derived Mylea, did not respond to our request for comment. Tellingly, though, Bolt Threads’ website describes Mylo as “a sustainable alternative to leather”. On its own site, Mycotech calls Mylea “the mycelium leather”.

Even an article published early last autumn in scientific journal Nature Sustainability, part of the widely respected Nature group of publications, suggested that mycelium is not only “leather-like”, but also a substitute. Interestingly, the same text cited a 2019 Master of Science thesis from Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its source for the statement that plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyurethane (PU) are more environmentally friendly than bovine leather, which perhaps throws some of its other assertations into question. Approximately one month after this study was published, on October 24, 2020, a major Italian leather law came into force. As then president of the country’s national tanning industry association, UNIC, Gianni Russo, told World Leather in the run-up to this action, the law provides stakeholders with a “legal weapon” to help prevent the presentation of synthetic alternatives as leather.

Italy is of course especially renowned for its leather artistry, but this unambiguous movement towards protecting the nobility of leather throws issues surrounding the language used to describe what is and is not real leather elsewhere in the world into stark relief. Might the presently perpetuated terminology for some mycelium materials be further muddying the waters? Managing director of Belgium-based mycelium technology provider Mycelia, Kasper Moreaux, does not think so. He tells us that he is “very comfortable” with the term “vegan leather” being used to describe materials made with Mycelia’s biotechnology. “It is just what it is,” he says.

Growing dissonance

Mr Moreaux was not at liberty to disclose the names of brands or businesses currently engaged in using Mycelia’s technology, but he did express that his own company is “very involved”. Notably, he praises the beauty of authentic leather and states that he does not believe that the material will    ever lose its charm – or that it will ever “fully” be replaced. However, he does predict that this may happen partially, as part of what he calls a small revolution in materials. On the one hand, Mr Moreaux depicts the drive to swap petrochemical-derived synthetics for mycelium-made biomaterials as his industry’s focal point, yet, on the other, he tells us that as a species we are currently using too much of the earth’s surface for cows. He is not alone in framing the use of leather through a meat and dairy lens.

Former Hermès chief executive, Patrick Thomas, the first and only non-family-member manager of the house, joined the boards of both MycoWorks and Swiss luxury group Richemont over the summer. Although Mr Thomas has reportedly not had any direct involvement with Hermès since retiring from his role there in 2014, the media was again quick to stress his old links back to the brand as part of a wider leather-versus-mycelium narrative, particularly following the news of his MycoWorks appointment. Intriguingly, Mr Thomas told Vogue Business at the time that he believes there will be an additional luxury category reserved for mycelium-derived (and other non-animal) materials going forward, “particularly [one made up of] young women who don’t want to eat meat”.

Mr Thomas not only believes this consumer group already exists, but that it could be responsible for growing the mycelium market to at least 10% of the luxury goods industry over the next 20 years. The technology is certainly there, according to Mr Moreaux, for those who can make the “considerable” investment. At the moment, only around five or six players currently possess the know-how needed, he tells us, but mycelium is “very scalable”. MycoWorks agrees, attributing what it describes as the inherent scalability of the process behind growing and harvesting its Fine Mycelium to its closed-tray system. If true, then perhaps enough demand and satisfactory technology is there to make a viable bio-business out of mycelium for those with appropriate resources. But the terminology for marketing these materials is patently not ready.

Nothing new under the sun

The argument for why non-leather products should not be portrayed as “leather” or even “leather-like” has been well-established in the pages of this magazine. Just as some have observed a growing interest in mycelium products, others have taken note of a trend towards the leather industry demanding respect for the unique qualities, properties and values of the time-honoured natural by-product in which it trades. To a certain extent, some stakeholders have taken notice of this. However, to suggest that leather should or could be substituted, while praising the leather industry’s artisans for their work — something that MycoWorks is doing in Spain, asking them to work with non-leather materials in a similar way — remains problematic.

There is a need to replace petroleum-based synthetics, just not at the expense of leather’s reputation. What is not leather, is simply not leather. 

MycoWorks was founded by two artists in San Francisco.   
Credit: Alyssa Duncan / MycoWorks

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