Lululemon Reveals Mushroom Leather Yoga Accessories
The world’s first yoga mat made from mushroom leather is among the innovative new products created using a sustainable leather-like fabric derived from mushroom cells.
The new textured yoga mat made from mushroom leather. Credit: Lululemon
Leading athleisure brand Lululemon has unveiled its first yoga accessories made from the highly-anticipated future-fabric mushroom leather.
Lululemon’s three new items include a yoga bag and a duffel bag, as well as the world’s first woven yoga mat made from mushroom leather.
U.S. biotechnology company Bolt Threads created the mushroom leather, called Mylo.
As a material, Mylo is said to have a remarkable resemblance to soft, supple leather, and can be used like animal or synthetic leather and can take on any color, finish or emboss.
Mylo is created using a highly efficient grow process that is intentionally designed to be low impact – taking less than two weeks to grow, emitting fewer greenhouse gases and using less water and resources than animal leather. The groundbreaking material, Bolt Threads say, is “everything you love about leather without everything you (and the planet) don’t”.
This collaboration between Lululemon and Bolt Threads is one of the first announcements since a groundbreaking mushroom leather consortium was revealed last year. Adidas, Stella McCartney, Kering, and Lululemon teamed up to create the consortium, with the aim to introduce mushroom leather to the mainstream fashion industry.
Speaking about the consortium, fashion designer Stella McCartney explained “many people associate leather with luxury but since the beginning I always wanted to approach things in a different way because killing animals for the sake of fashion is quite simply not acceptable”.
More than a billion cows, pigs, goats, sheep, alligators, ostriches, kangaroos, and even dogs and cats are cruelly slaughtered for their skins every year. But now more and more cutting-edge and cruelty-free alternatives like Mylo are becoming available.
Lululemon plans to launch the bags for sale in early 2022, while a date for the yoga mat has yet to be announced. In the meantime, find out more about animal-free leathers with our Ten Stylish Alternatives to Animal Leather.
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An estimated two million wild kangaroos are slaughtered every year to produce “k-leather”, which is used in certain models of soccer cleats.