Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Oh, patents ! Victoria, Hermès’ Sylvania Fine Mycelium™ alternative leather bag

The almost 200-year-old luxury fashion brand Hermès, known for its exceptionally crafted leather goods and scarves, has designed, a Victoria(1) weekender bag, made of canvas, Sylvania Fine Mycelium™ alternative leather, and calfskin (see image below). For a family-run company that originally became famous for the fabrication of award-winning horse harnesses and saddles, keeping this tradition alive to date through its logos and branding, the use of alternative leather comes as an almost inconceivable step.

Chief among the reasons that may account for the use of alternative leather are kindness to animals, and a care about environmental footprints, whether in term of industrial toxin spills or energy use. In turn, increasing numbers of consumers hold businesses accountable for responsible practices. However, one additional factor might also provide alternative leather with fulcrum power: advances in technology.

In this particular case, advances in the sustainable engineering of an alternative to leather, finally good enough to be endorsed by leaders in leather fashion. An alternative leather that possesses such requisite qualities as "softness, drape, thickness, shape, texture, flexibility, strength, and density" (Mycoworks). Qualities, satisfying enough for designers to want to design and experiment with the new alternative. In this case also, a leather that is neither animal, nor plastic, but organic. Indeed a lab-grown product made of mycelium, aka mushroom roots.

The Sylvania Fine Mycelium™ alternative leather, used for the Hermès Victoria weekender bag, is lab-grown in the San Francisco Bay Area by MycoWorks. A company specializing in directed and controlled tissue development and post-growth processing, in particular fungal materials and objects, in partnership with designers and other interested parties. Once produced, the Fine Mycelium™ sheets are tanned and fashioned to specification in France by Hermès artisans, according to the company’s guidelines for quality control.

MycoWorks' alternative leather is patented. Interestingly, unlike plants which photosynthesize nutrients directly from sun rays, mushrooms obtain their nutrients and water from plants and trees, in fusion with them. Because of the mushroom’s inability to photosynthesize chlorophyll from the sun, mushrooms are thus said to have more in common with animals than with plants. Indeed, before mushrooms pop-up, out of the earth, or attach to barks, mushroom bodies are formed as filaments called hyphae. Hyphae which interconnect into webs called mycelium, beneath the earth, in fusion with tree roots or plants, that are providing them with a source of nutrients and water for growth, inside the soil.

Growing fungal tissue in a lab thus takes advantage of the way mushrooms fuse with their sources of nutrients in mycorrhizal relationship, in order to control the growth and properties of the mycelium that will be expressed. A process, where not only the nutrients are controlled, but also light, humidity, and temperature, as well as gases, to which the organisms are exposed. Thus, fungal tissue might be lab-grown in enormous quantities, given the right conditions. Fungal tissue is also responsive to varying stimuli. Thus, different properties might be expressed depending on the "gravitropic, thermotropic, thigmotropic, phototropic, and hydrotropic stimuli", all of which are part of the patented processes of fabrication, recited for example in the patent US10842089B2, titled Objects made from fungal materials.

Below, a list of some of the patented inventions connected to the Fine Mycelium™ platform, together with an image of the Herm ès Victoria weekender bag, arising out of one of the MycoWorks’ partnerships.

US10842089B2 - Objects made from fungal materials.
US9410116B2 - Method for producing fungus structures.
MX2019014919A - Fungal composites comprising mycelium and an embedded material.
KR20210081358A - Mycelium growth bed.
CA3074740A1 - Deacetylation and crosslinking of chitin and chitosan in fungal materials and their composites for tunable properties
CN112912488A - Improved penetration and adhesion of finishing agents for fungal materials through solubilization, emulsion, or dispersion in water-soluble materials and the use of surfactants.
EP3869938A1 - Monokaryon mycelial material and related method of production.
WO2020018963A1- Mycelium with reduced coefficient of friction and abrasion resistance through mechanical alteration of mycelial surface microstructure.
WO2021158678A1 - Novel microstructures of mycelium and mycelium-based materials.

Note

(1) The product designation Victoria refers to Zimbabwe's famous waterfalls, the Victoria Falls. The Hermès Victoria collection was launched in 1997, on the occasion of Hermès' Year of Africa celebration (Hermès website).

References

MycoWorks (website) https://www.mycoworks.com/

Hermès (website) https://www.hermes.com/us/en/

Hermès - Contemporary Artisans since 1897

https://www.hermes.com/us/en/story/271292-contemporary-artisans-since-1837/

Intravaia, L (March 11, 2021). Hermès signe un sac Victoria avec de l’alter-cuir Sylvania Fine Mycelium de MycoWorks
https://boudoirnumerique.com/magazine/herms-signe-un-sac-victoria-avec-de-lalter-cuir-de-champignon-fine-mycelium-de-mycoworks

Mycroworks - Reishi https://youtu.be/vcrKZrNFVDA (YouTube video)