“T-Rex Leather” Takes a Bite out of Luxury Fashion
Bioengineering and creativity create a new luxury item with Cretaceous inspiration.
There are vintage handbags, and now there’s one with origins dating back 66 million years. Last April, the biotechnology, fashion, and art worlds came together to debut the first-ever handbag made of T-Rex Leather.
The bag was made by Polish fashion label Enfin Levé, which describes itself as a maker of “experimental garments.” It is created from synthetic leather produced through a collaboration between Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., biotechnology innovator The Organoid Company, and creative agency VML. This leather, announced last year, started with fragments of fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex collagen. The Organoid Company created synthetic DNA from genetic material derived from the fossils, which was then inserted into living cells used by Lab-Grown Leather to grow skin tissue. The product has the physical and structural qualities of natural leather.
The resulting bag is a dark teal color with a diagonal zipper and curving vents on the front that echo the shape of the DNA helix. The type of hardware attaching the straps is a nod to the genetic engineering behind its production. The bag made its debut on April 2 at the Art Zoo Museum in Amsterdam as part of a display with a life-sized cast of a T. rex skeleton. Six weeks later, it went to auction with a starting price of £500,000, or about $663,000.
Paleontologists have criticized the project’s marketing, calling it misleading for implying that it uses leather made from T. rex skin. Any existing T. rex genetic material would have decayed millions of years ago, so there was none involved in the project. There is no way of knowing what real T. rex leather would be like, because no skin has survived fossilization.
The true aim of the project is not to resurrect a long-extinct species, but to demonstrate the potential of a unique form of synthetic leather. Lab-Grown Leather promotes its product as a type of leather with the same composition, aesthetics, durability, and versatility as natural leather, without the environmental damage or the need to kill animals. The handbag is intended to present the material as a luxury item, going against the typical image of synthetic leather as a cheap substitute.
