You’ve heard of hemp, and maybe even Tencel — now here’s the next generation of eco-textiles. They’re state of the art, have the nod from on high — in fashion, that is — and are made of the sort of thing you might have rotting in your little food waste bin. No, really. Apple skin, banana plants, fungi: what the latest and greatest leather and polyester alternatives are made of sounds more suited to compost than couture.
But the end results are not to be sniffed at. They are reinventing what was once destined for the incineration pile on the one hand and disrupting what fashion deems worthy of a luxury label on the other.
That used to mean varieties of animal hide — and
