the material: MycaNova®, a Belgian vegan leather made from mycelium
The MycaNova® collection offers a vegan alternative to leather products through luxury-crafted designs created from mycelium, the underground structure of fungi.
Mycelia are the fascinating “roots” of a fungus, made of millions of tiny white threads growing and stretching underground, forming a large-scale network known as the wood wide web. This web connects the roots of trees and plants, enabling them to share water, nutrients, signals, and basically creating a forest-wide communication and resource-sharing community. What few people know is that this material can also be used for other innovative purposes, like MycaNova® - a Belgian leather alternative.
From a desire to search for vegan alternatives, we started in 2020 an intense collaboration with bioengineers from the Belgian company Citribel. This company uses sugar molasses – a residual product from the nearby sugar factory in Tienen – to ferment into citric acid, during which mycelium – another waste product – is formed. Two years of experimenting, adjusting, and testing materials resulted in MycaNova®. After being dried and grounded into powder and combined with binding agents and backing materials, the mycelium transforms into a double-upcycled vegan leather alternative.
“We strongly believe in the use of leather as a residual product from the meat industry. However, given that this industry has a large environmental impact, it is important to start focusing on innovative and high-quality alternatives. This is how our collaboration with MycaNova® started”—Lies Mertens
Since April 2023, the MycaNova® collection has symbolized our ongoing research into durable materials. Even though we strongly believe that using traceable byproduct leather from European suppliers is a durable option, we equally find it crucial to keep researching scientific alternatives.
There are various types of mycelia, each with its unique properties. The fungus responsible for producing the MycaNova mycelium has evolved over several decades to thrive on sugar molasses and produce citric acid, resulting in the co-production of mycelium.
Rather than choosing radically, leather and MycaNova® can exist alongside one another. The material is high-quality and offers the same sensory experience as animal leather. It is durable, elastic, sturdy, rain-resistant, and scratch-resistant. In every square meter, 20 to 60 grams of plastic is replaced with mycelium, making it an organic alternative. The collectionis designed in-house and carefully manufactured in our small-scale Belgian-run atelier in Tunisia.
