Ecovative, the mycelium technology company, announced the final new member of its Fashion for Good Cooperative — sustainable fashion company Reformation — as well as a direct partnership with leading footwear company Wolverine Worldwide, to collaborate in the testing, development and commercialization of custom mycelium materials for use in their products.
Reformation and Wolverine join a roster of brands entering into collaboration with Ecovative in the Fashion for Good initiated project, including Fashion for Good partners Bestseller, Pangaia, PVH Corp. and Vivobarefoot. They will draw from Ecovative’s expertise in cutting-edge mycelium materials, in particular its specialized Forager division focused on soft goods for fashion and apparel, providing feedback that will guide the testing and development to replace incumbent materials in products that traditionally use animal leather or plastic, said the company. Ecovative has already developed two products for the fashion and footwear industries: Forager Hides, a premium leather-like material, and Forager Foams, for breathable insulation and structural support components, each made with pure mycelium. All of Ecovative’s products are bio-based, free of plastics and toxic chemicals, grown on agricultural byproducts such as woodchips and seed hulls and fully compostable at the end of a product’s life. Full-size mycelium sheets are grown in sheets up to 24 meters in length and 1.8 meters wide over the course of just 9 days. These mycelium materials represent viable, sustainable, scalable alternatives to the fashion and apparel industries’ unsustainable status quo, Ecovative said.
“We’re beyond excited to join Ecovative’s cooperative to support the development of an entirely plastics-free leather alternative for scalable industry use,” said Kathleen Talbot, Reformation’s chief sustainability officer and vice president of operations. “Since relaunching our Ref Shoes category in 2021, we’ve invested deeply in the nex-gen space to find a vegan solution that meets our high product and sustainability standards, without the plastic. Helping test and bring Ecovative’s Forager Hide to market is a critical evolution of this work, and one that we hope will drive forward a holistic sustainability agenda for fashion. We’re energized to unlock a solution that can not only be used in future Reformation collections but be made available to the entire industry.”
As the urgency of the climate crisis sinks in, consumers and brands alike are eager to replace the leather in wearables, the supportive foams used in shoes and jackets, and the plastic found throughout the industry’s products, with sustainable alternatives that don’t come at a cost to quality or durability. Industrial animal agriculture — of which leather is a co-product — requires more arable land than any industry on Earth, consuming immense amounts of water, and using caustic chemicals. Plastics also represent a global crisis, and the apparel space has an especially high footprint of plastic, which is involved in almost every product for structural support and durable finishes, making many of them impossible to recycle or reclaim. Ecovative’s mycelium technologies make it possible to replace these unsustainable materials with fully compostable alternatives that come from and return to nature, the company said.
“The need for more sustainable materials is clear, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring them to market in partnership with Wolverine and Reformation,” said Gavin McIntyre, Ecovative’s co-founder and chief commercial officer. “Both companies represent an immense amount of market knowledge, a diverse family of products and expertise in complex supply chains that will be crucial to applying our mycelium materials for maximum impact. Together we are taking a big step towards transforming these industries for the better.”
