Can This Tiny Midwestern Startup Become the Beyond Meat of Leather?
Fashion designers, environmentalists, and car companies are desperate for someone to invent animal-free leather. This Peoria, Illinois upstart thinks it can.
In September, Luke Haverhals, a 41-year-old former chemistry professor from Peoria, Illinois, found himself at London Fashion Week, strolling through the exhibition halls while dressed in his go-to power outfit: a white dress shirt, blue pants, a brown belt, and a two-year-old sports jacket selected by his wife, Noelle. Very presentable, he thought. He passed by a collection of eco-friendly couture — dresses made from discarded can tabs, bags crafted from landfill waste, swimwear constructed out of ocean plastic — before stopping at an exhibit by Felder & Felder, the British fashion label best known for its distressed leather jackets, laser cut dresses, and daringly sheer shirts.
Like a tourist arriving at the Eiffel Tower, this was the singular thing he had traveled thousands of miles to see: a mannequin draped in a sleek, shimmering gold evening gown. Under the spotlights, the material looked glossy, almost latex-like, but it’s about as far from latex as chemically possible. The dress — and Haverhals’s brown belt — were both made from Mirum, a…
