Basing on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, if Homo sapiens had been hanging around during the late Cretaceous period (that’s about 68 to 66 million years ago, give or take a meteor), they’d be firmly stuck at the bottom rung—hunting T-rex for dinner, not haute couture. Leather goods? Please. They’d be lucky not to become the leather goods. But that was before.
Fast-forward to 2025, and apparently we’ve evolved so far up the pyramid that someone thought, “You know what’s missing from fashion? A T-rex leather handbag.” And now scientists and ad agencies are spending actual time and money to grow dinosaur skin in a lab—for handbags. Yep, you heard that right. Lab-grown T-rex leather. For handbags. What a time to be alive, indeed.
Behind this sci-fi-meets-high-fashion moment is a three-way collab between VML, Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., and The Organoid Company. Basically, they’re turning fossilized T-rex collagen into an actual luxury material. No dinosaurs were harmed (or cloned) in the making—just some clever synthetic DNA, cell cultivation, and a bit of prehistoric swagger.
The resulting material isn’t just another mushroom leather knockoff. It’s fully biodegradable, cruelty-free, and identical to real leather, down to the texture and toughness. It also doesn’t rely on scaffolds or additives—meaning it grows into its leathery self all on its own, like a well-trained science experiment with excellent taste.
While we don’t have a launch price yet (USD to be announced), the first accessories are expected to drop by the end of 2025. Other highlights include repairability, natural durability, and enough “I’m wearing extinct leather” energy to start a conversation at any overpriced rooftop party.
Anyhoo, if you’ve ever wanted to strut around with a piece of apex predator history on your arm—without actually contributing to deforestation or chemical waste—your moment is almost here. Thankfully, T-rex does not have feathers like some dinosaurs thought to have, else you’d have a feathery bag which wouldn’t be as classic, would it?
Images: Reimagination by ChatGPT Image Generation.
