You'll Be Able to Grow Your Leather Handbags (Without Hurting Cows)
You grow your flowers and your vegetables, but your handbag? Well that's new. As The Cut pointed out after Sophie Hackford, director of WIRED Consulting, spoke at last week's Condé Nast Luxury Conference, new technologies are being created where you won't need to kill a cow for its skin, but rather can grow real, soft, leather-like fabrics in a lab. How is it possible? A company called Modern Meadow is taking a biopsy from a cow (totally harmless, FYI) to mimic the leather and improve it. And you can directly grow this around a 3-D shape, like the latest handbag silhouette.
While we've yet to see what one of these "grown" bags will look like, Modern Meadow may already have begun working with brands. We'll keep you posted when we find out more.
What do you think of this new, sustainable technology? Would you buy a "grown" bag? Let us know in the comment section below. And if you can't wait and want to buy a new bag today, shop a few of our favourite styles here.
Bobby Schuessler is a fashion editor with over a decade of editorial experience covering shopping, style, and beauty. He's spent over seven years at Who What Wear, currently leading the market team to deliver highly covetable and convertible content. He creates data-driven shopping guides featuring top retailers like Nordstrom, Shopbop, and Net-a-Porter and is at the forefront of Who What Wear's shopping tentpole strategies, including Amazon Prime Day. He also works on branded content initiatives and appears on camera in video and shopping livestream franchises. He has also worked across a variety of other media brands and fashion retailers like Refinery29, PureWow, Men's Health, and Gilt covering commerce, trend reporting, women's and men's fashion, home, and lifestyle.
