Mushroom-based Leather! by Mylo

The Mylo Driver Bag Features the World’s First Mushroom-based Leather!

Designed to stay sustainable, natural, and to not cut corners on the experience of owning leather, the Driver Bag features a one-of-a-kind leather alternative… a leather made from mushrooms! Made from the fibrous mycelium found in mushroom roots, Mylo looks and feels exactly like actual leather (it’s apparently difficult to tell the two apart), except without the environmental impact, and is a qualitative step up from faux-leather, given how it looks and behaves exactly like the real thing. In every sense, it’s the Impossible Burger equivalent of the Fashion Industry.

Developed by Bolt Threads and Designed by Chester Wallace, the Driver Bag is a debut for the one-of-a-kind mushroom leather. The bag serves two broad purposes. Its design and styling makes it ideal for owning and using in your daily life. The Mylo comes with a unique brown patina, reminiscent of distressed leather, and is just as resilient and stylish. Along with the black canvas trims, you’ve got a bag that looks as good as (if not better than) the next one, boasting of two internal and three external pockets to segregate your items. The bag’s second purpose is to disrupt the leather market with an alternative that’s ecologically sustainable, cruelty-free, and can be produced in days instead of years, without the material waste and moral conundrum of using animal hides or toxic chemicals.

The Mylo super-fabric gained traction as early as the beginning of 2018 while also receiving support from fashion icon Stella McCartney, who displayed her work with Mylo at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in April. The Driver Bag, designed by Portland-based Chester Wallace, is one of many products in the Mylo portfolio (which extend to a clutch and a keyring too). Bolt Threads hopes that getting Mylo noticed by the world will help bolster its production, allowing it to become as big as, if not bigger than, leather, while minimizing the ecological impact on our planet!

Designer: Bolt Threads

 

Designed in collaboration with Portland-based brand Chester Wallace, the Bolt Projects Mylo™ Driver Bag is a unisex tote, crafted with practical functionality top of mind. A recreation of Chester Wallace’s classic Driver silhouette, every bag is hand-cut and sewn in Portland, OR and constructed entirely from Bolt Threads’ Mylo™ material, paired with a canvas base. The bag features a durable carry-all silhouette with two internal and three external organization pockets.

What is Mylo?

Mylo is a modern take on leather grown from mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms. Mycelium grows underground in soil. It forms vast networks of threads that help recycle organic matter on the forest floor while providing nutrients to plants and trees. The threads interweave and self-assemble into a 3D matrix that can spread for miles.

Material Development

Mylo looks like hand-crafted leather and shares the same warm touch and suppleness – and because they control the growth environment and process, they are able to manipulate the material’s properties and make each Mylo™ Driver bag truly one-of-a-kind.

Mylo is created by combining mycelium cells with a substrate of corn stalks and nutrients. Over 10 days the cells grow into the substrate, creating an interconnected mass that can be made into almost any size. The result is a material that looks and feels remarkably like animal leather. Yet Mylo can be produced in days versus years, without the material waste of using animal hides or the toxic chemicals used in producing synthetic leathers.