Hermès will make a bag with mushroom-based leather

Hermès is perhaps the brand most connected to the concept of traditional luxury – a brand that doesn't invest in social media marketing, whose bags must be purchased after long waiting lists and whose production is to a large extent still artisanal. For this reason, the announcement that the historic French brand has partnered with the Californian start-up MycoWorks for the production of vegan leather-based on mycelium – that is, the vegetative apparatus of mushrooms – is so surprising. Mushroom-based vegan leather is nothing new in itself: but the decision to use and sell it, which comes from one of the most famous and traditionalist fashion houses in history is certainly emblematic of the sustainable turning point of fashion. The new material, with an amber colour, will be called Sylvania and will be used together with canvas and calfskin elements to create a new model of Victoria Bag. The same company MycoWorks presented, in February last year, the new material Reishi Fine Mycelium at New York Fashion Week. 

The new bag will be available by the end of 2021 and is expected to serve as an opener for a new line of eco-friendly brand offerings. The event is significant because it represents a turning point, especially for a brand like Hermès very attached to traditional practices, including the use (now increasingly rare in fashion) of exotic skins such as crocodile for its products. But the market is changing, consumers want to buy from ethical brands, and mushroom-based leather is a material that is gaining immense traction.

Hermès Victoria Bag prototype produced with new material

Stella McCartney and mega-group Kering have already formed a partnership with vegan leather producer Bolt Threads who not only has already created a tote named Mylo Bag but has already collaborated on the first prototypes with Stella McCartney. At the same time, the start-up that partnered with Hermès, MycoWorks, received $45 million in investment from a number of fashion houses that remained anonymous, various Hollywood stars (including Natalie Portman), Taipei-based company WTT Investment Ltd. and investment fund DCVC Bio. 

Bolt Thread's Mylo Bag

Bolt Thread's Mylo Bag

Bolt Thread's Mylo Bag

You would be wrong, however, to consider Hermès an unsustainable brand because of its traditionalism. It is precisely the opposite: even without huge statements, the brand has implemented a series of measures to promote sustainability in its practices and its products have begun to attract even the youngest and most attentive customers precisely because of their (almost proverbial) longevity. A point of view expressed by the brand's creative director, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, who explained: 

MycoWorks’ vision and values echo those of Hermès: a strong fascination with natural raw material and its transformation, a quest for excellence, with the aim of ensuring that objects are put to their best use and that their longevity is maximised. With Sylvania, Hermès is at the heart of what it has always been: innovation in the making.