Can a New Material Become Luxury Before Culture Accepts It?

Calfskin has long held its place in luxury. Mycelium, a material grown from the root-like network of fungi, has been under development for little more than a decade. To understand how consumers value one against the other, The Future Luxury Lab’s founder conducted primary research for her Executive MSc thesis at the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris, interviewing fifteen consumers and four industry experts across Europe, the UK, the US and India. The research included a comparison in which participants assessed calfskin and mycelium products without knowing which material was which. Its findings point to a gap that has surprisingly little to do with the material itself.

Our View: The gap is social, not material

Luxury materials derive their value from more than physical performance. They carry accumulated associations with craftsmanship, permanence, heritage, status and cultural recognition. Calfskin has built that position over centuries. The challenge facing bio-based materials is therefore not only whether they can perform like established luxury materials, but whether they can eventually acquire comparable meaning and desirability.

The research revealed an important tension. Once the materials’ identities were concealed, the difference between calfskin and mycelium proved far less obvious than expected. Most participants could not correctly identify the calfskin product, and they judged the craftsmanship of the two as broadly comparable. In other words, some of the superiority we attribute to established luxury materials may not come from their physical qualities alone.

The more significant barrier appeared once the material entered a social context. Participants could personally accept mycelium as a credible luxury material while remaining unsure whether other people would see it the same way. The research names this the Social Validation Gap: the distance between personal acceptance of a new material and confidence that others will recognise it as luxury. It was not an isolated doubt. It appeared consistently across the interviews, and it surfaced most clearly when participants considered carrying a mycelium product in public.

Participants also fell into three broad groups: Heritage Conservatives, Innovation Progressives and a Socially Hesitant Middle. It is in this middle group, open to the material but uncertain how it would be read by others, that the gap matters most.

This changes how we should understand material innovation in luxury. A new material does not become luxurious simply by reaching technical equivalence or carrying stronger sustainability credentials. Luxury value is socially constructed. Materials become desirable through repeated association with exceptional products, craftsmanship, prestigious houses, cultural institutions and influential people.

Leather already possesses that cultural infrastructure. Emerging materials are still building it. It is the same conclusion our reading of Kering’s Wardrobe Edition reached from the design side: the question for luxury may be less whether a new material can replace leather, and more whether it can develop a recognisable luxury identity of its own.

Strategic Implication:

For luxury brands, the strategic challenge is to build desirability alongside material innovation, rather than expecting one to follow from the other.

The research suggests three priorities.

Lead with craftsmanship, not sustainability. Introduce emerging materials through quality, design and creative excellence. Sustainability should strengthen the proposition, not define it.

Show long-term commitment. Durability, repair services, warranties and after-sales support signal that a material is made to last, building the confidence an unfamiliar material does not yet command.

Build legitimacy beyond the brand. The authority of an established house can accelerate early acceptance, but lasting recognition needs repeated presence across fashion, influential editorial platforms, cultural institutions and adjacent luxury sectors: the same infrastructure that made leather what it is.

The opportunity, then, is not simply to create alternatives to leather. It is to give new materials the craftsmanship, cultural meaning and recognition they need to develop luxury identities of their own.

Strategic Question: If luxury is socially constructed, who gives a new material permission to be luxurious: the houses that use it, the culture around it, or the people who choose to carry it?

Source: Rupali Kolge; Institut Français de la Mode