The world’s first luxury product made from engineered prehistoric leather
A one-of-a-kind handbag designed by Enfin Levé.
Unveiled at Art Zoo Museum in Amsterdam on 2 April 2026.
Created through the collaboration between Lab-Grown Leather Ltd, VML and The Organoid Company.
A new chapter in leather begins here
T-Rex Leather™ is the first public expression of what happens when ancient biology meets advanced tissue engineering.
Developed by Lab-Grown Leather Ltd in collaboration with VML and The Organoid Company, this material has been created to show that the future of luxury leather does not need to depend on animals being raised and killed for their hides.
Its debut takes the form of a one-of-a-kind luxury handbag designed by avant-garde techwear label Enfin Levé. Unveiled at Art Zoo Museum in Amsterdam beside a colossal cast of a T. rex skeleton, the piece marks a striking meeting point between prehistoric biology and future-facing luxury design..
What is T-Rex Leather™?
T-Rex Leather™ is a novel leather material engineered using reconstructed dinosaur collagen sequences, advanced computational biology and Lab-Grown Leather Ltd’s proprietary Advanced Tissue Engineering Platform (ATEP™).
It sits within our Elemental X™ product stream, where biology, design and material innovation come together to create entirely new leather possibilities.
This is not a surface treatment, a plastic substitute or a coated imitation. It is a biologically engineered leather material created through a scaffold-free process that allows cells to build their own natural structure.
How it is made
To engineer leather from an extinct species, the team began with fossil-derived T. rex collagen sequences.
Using advanced computational biology and AI modelling, the missing genetic information required to form a complete collagen blueprint was predicted and reconstructed. That synthesised DNA was then inserted into a carrier cell line.
Billions of engineered cells were cultivated using our proprietary Advanced Tissue Engineering Platform (ATEP™) and translated into a leather material through our scaffold-free approach.
The result is a durable, repairable, biodegradable and fully traceable material created without animal slaughter, without deforestation-linked hide supply, and without chromium-heavy tanning processes.
Why this matters
The leather industry has long faced pressure around sustainability, traceability and reliance on animal agriculture.
At the same time, many alternatives have struggled to convince luxury markets because they compromise on authenticity, performance or material character.
T-Rex Leather™ takes a different route.
Rather than imitating leather from the outside, it rethinks leather at the biological level.
The project shows how Lab-Grown Leather Ltd’s platform can unlock new classes of high-value materials while preserving the tactile quality, strength and longevity expected of premium leather goods.
It also demonstrates a broader point.
Leather is no longer limited by what animals we raise, but by what biology we can design.
The first expression: a one-of-a-kind handbag
For its public debut, T-Rex Leather™ has been transformed into a one-of-a-kind luxury handbag by Enfin Levé.
Known for its technical precision, structural thinking and progressive design language, Enfin Levé approached the material as something to be understood rather than forced into familiar luxury conventions. The result is a singular object shaped by the behaviour and character of the material itself.
Following its unveiling, the bag will remain on display at Art Zoo Museum for six weeks before being auctioned to the highest bidder.
From one piece to future applications
While this first piece is unique, the material is not intended to remain a one-off.
T-Rex Leather™ will continue to be developed for future commercial availability, with initial applications focused on luxury accessories.
Over time, the wider potential of the platform extends into fashion, automotive and other high-performance material categories.
This is one expression of a bigger ambition inside Lab-Grown Leather Ltd’s Elemental X™ programme: creating leather materials that do not copy the past, but expand what leather can be.
Collaboration
T-Rex Leather™ has been developed through a multidisciplinary collaboration:
- Lab-Grown Leather Ltd Advanced tissue engineering, scaffold-free leather creation and material development
- VML Creative concept, strategic development and cultural positioning
- The Organoid Company Genome and protein engineering to reconstruct and optimise the prehistoric biomaterial blueprint
- Enfin Levé Design of the first luxury object made from T-Rex Leather™
