Alternative materials at Kering: lots of talk, few products
Luxury group Kering delivered a new presentation on its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies to investors in mid-September.
Among the priorities it highlighted, the group doubled down on its perplexing recent messages about leather. It wants to extend the scope of the work its Material Innovation Lab is doing.
At the new ESG investors’ presentation, Kering said it wanted the lab to take on the paradoxical task of extending the use of non-leather materials in “leathergoods applications”.
This tallies with comments chief executive Luca De Meo made earlier in 2026. He said he wanted the group to reduce what he called the “leather intensity” of its products by 30% by 2028, with 2025 as the baseline.
He defined the term “leather intensity” as the number of square-metres of finished leather the group consumes to earn €1 million from sales of leathergoods and footwear. Mr De Meo said he wanted to “decouple growth” from its brands’ dependency on leather.
But at the same time, he said he wants the group’s biggest brand, Gucci, to earn an additional €1 billion from leathergoods by 2030. He also wants Balenciaga to double its leathergoods business by the same year.
The group chief executive also wants this reduction in “leather intensity” to take place alongside Bottega Veneta continuing to be “the ultimate symbol of luxury craftsmanship in leathergoods”, and leathergoods being “a strategic, key pillar for Saint Laurent”.
Kering introduced the Material Innovation Lab, which is based in Milan, in 2013. The role of the lab is to promote traceability and the procurement of “responsible and innovative materials”, while minimising environmental impact.
At the ESG presentation, Kering highlighted six “next-generation materials” that it believes can help the Material Innovation Lab fulfil this remit. It presented four of the six as alternatives to leather. These four materials are called Peelsphere, Demetra, Lunaform and Bananatex.
Among its references to these materials in September, Kering said Lunaform was “stronger and finer than traditional animal leather”. The group’s first mention of this material was in 2024. It said Gucci had launched a first handbag made from Demetra in 2023 and that Balenciaga had used Bananatex in its Triple S sneaker range in 2024.
Kering itself was responsible for bringing Peelsphere to the attention of the fashion industry, awarding it first prize for green innovation at Kering Generation Award in 2021. None of these materials is altogether new.
On October 8, searches on Kering e-commerce sites in French, Italian and English found no products made from Peelsphere available to the group’s customers. Equally, there were no products made from Bananatex available to buy. The number of available products containing Lunaform was also zero.
There were 12 Demetra-containing Gucci products available for purchase. These included novelty products such as a dice set, a pencil set and three playing-card sets. The remaining seven products were all for pets. These included three types of collar and three types of leash for the stylish, vegan dog-about-town to choose from.
Perhaps the Demetra pièce de résistance is the GG waste-bag holder. This is a small canvas bag with an engraved pattern based on the initials of the brand’s founder, Guccio Gucci. It has a Demetra trim. Customers can use it to carry waste-bags for cleaning up after their dogs in the street or in the park.
The current UK price for the GG waste-bag holder is £265. This includes complimentary personalisation. Waste-bags, however, are not included.
Image: Kering.
