The extraordinary mind of VML global chief creative officer, Innovation & CCO, Bas Korsten, has already given the world The Mammoth Meatball, a cultivated meat made from the DNA of the long-extinct woolly mammoth (no animal slaughter, no large-cale livestock production damaging the planet). Now his quest to find products for future humans, that don’t harm the planet, has created the world’s first handbag made from lab-grown T-Rex Leather.
The leather, used to make a one-of-a-kind handbag designed by avant-garde techwear label, Enfin Levé, was built from reconstructed dinosaur collagen without harming a single animal. The project was conceived by VML and developed with genomic engineering leader, The Organoid Company; and sustainable biotechnology pioneer, Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. It exists to demonstrate that the future of luxury leather need not rely on animals being killed for their hides and the new material will be available to luxury brands in the future.
T-Rex leather made its first public debut at Art Zoo Museum in Amsterdam on April 2 as the Enfin Levé handbag, displayed beside a life-sized T.Rex statue acquired by the museum from Naturalis Biodiversity Center. The structure is a cast of one of the most famous Tyrannosaurus rex specimens in the world, making Art Zoo a fitting setting for showcasing the first-ever product made from T-Rex Leather. Positioned alongside its prehistoric counterpart, the bag symbolises a bridge between ancient biology and future-facing luxury design. Following its six-week exhibition at Art Zoo, it will be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder.
To engineer leather from an extinct species, the team began with fossilised T.Rex collagen sequences, then used advanced computational biology and AI modelling, to predict and reconstruct the remaining genetic information required to form a complete collagen blueprint. The leather’s scaffold-free approach allows the cells to create their own natural structure, resulting in a material that is structurally identical to traditional leather. The outcome is a durable, repairable, biodegradable and fully traceable leather – grown without animal slaughter, deforestation, or chromium-heavy tanning processes.
Bas Korsten commented, “With T-Rex leather we’re harnessing the biology of the past to create the luxury materials of the future. The stark reality is that lab-grown leather hasn’t yet convinced the luxury world. Why? Because it feels like an imitation. We knew we had to do something radically different. Not a substitute, but something entirely new. So we went back 66 million years in time. The result is a material that doesn’t copy the past but reimagines it. Seeing it realised as a luxury object is a powerful milestone in shaping a new category of sustainable luxury.”
Read the full story on VML’s blog.
