Stella McCartney’s latest fabric is made from mushrooms

Mylo is a unique, sustainable textile derived from mushrooms

Sustainability is on everyones minds, and whilst many brands are challenging their carbon footprints by using recycled material, Stella McCartney has taken it a step further and created the first mushroom leather alternative fabric.

Those familiar with Stella and her brand will know as a lifelong vegan she has never incorporated animal hide, or fur into any of her collections, and now she is beginning to speak out about the incredibly damaging and toxic process that is required to treat leathers for clothing. Leather processing needs strong chemicals that are harmful to people and the planet, which is something Stella believes can be reduced significantly with some innovative thinking and research.

Mylo mushroom leather

Animal agriculture is a huge chunk of the growth in climate change, with beef and leather- producing cattle being linked in particular to global warming, deforestation and water pollution. Shockingly, animal agriculture is responsible for between 14.8-18% of the total global greenhouse gasses, with 65% of this coming from cattle alone. This staggering statistic puts things into perspective for meat eaters, but what about the fashion lovers?

Currently faux leathers are taking up the leather alternative market, but it is often viewed as less desirable and cheap. Being a fabric obtained from petroleum, many are asking, is this really better than leather?

McCartney has a range which includes her recycled polyester ‘alter-nappa’ which has a smaller carbon footprint, with the website reporting 24 times smaller than calf leather, but comes with reflection of neither solutions being ideal.

So what is Mylo?

Working with the team at Bolt Threads, Stella has developed a great leather alternative material, coined an ‘un-leather’, which is grown from mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus. Bolt Threads is a material solutions company in California that invents and scales advanced biomaterials to create sustainable fabrics.

The process begins with mycelium cells grown on beds of sawdust and other organic material. Billions of cells grow to form an interconnected 3D network which is processed, tanned, and dyed to make Mylo.

“We start by reproducing what happens under the forest floor in a controlled indoor environment. We take spores of mycelia cells and feed them sawdust and organic material, and place all of that on a square mat while controlling the humidity and temperature. The mycelium grows into a foamy layer — imagine a big bag of smushed marshmallows. Once the mycelium is harvested, we compost the leftover byproducts,” Mylo explained on a statement on their website. The mycelium is grown by expert mushroom farmers and scientists in indoor vertical farming facilities in Europe and the United States. It has not been genetically modified in anyway and there are no genetically engineered microbes required in manufacturing it.

“Once you take that technology and innovation and you marry it with luxury fashion and design and creativity, there’s no end to what magical madness you can create,” -Stella McCartney

This plant- based innovation was created with Mylo’s scientists so that the materials weight, drape and texture worked within the fashion houses garment construction process. They commented about the process being slow at first, but then ‘became very exciting, very quickly’.

Mylo made a prototype of her Falabella bag, which was on display at the Victoria & Albert’s ‘Fashioned from Nature’ exhibition. The fashion house do not plan to sell the bag as yet, but the founders excitement towards plant technologies future are clear.

The Stella McCartney Falabella bag made from Mylo leather

The McCartney brand formed a group of financial backers such as Kering, Adidas and Luluemon who have since invested heavily into Mylo’s development, and now the industry’s first ever fungi-derived fashion has been created.

Courtesy: Stella McCartney

Mylo can be used like animal or synthetic leather, and can take on any colour, emboss, or texture. The result bears an unmistakable resemblance to animal leather, but with a lower environmental impact.