Amsterdam, Netherlands – In a world first for luxury fashion, avant-garde techwear label Enfin Levé, founded by Polish designer Michal Hadas, has unveiled a one-of-a-kind handbag crafted from lab-grown T-Rex leather.
The handbag marks the debut of the world’s first product made from T-Rex Leather™, a material engineered using reconstructed dinosaur collagen and created without harming any living animals.
T-Rex Leather™ is the product of a collaboration between VML, The Organoid Company, and Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., showing that luxury leather can be sustainable and animal-free. Researchers started with fossilised T. rex collagen sequences and used computational biology and AI to reconstruct the full collagen blueprint. The synthesised DNA was inserted into carrier cells and grown using Lab-Grown Leather’s Advanced Tissue Engineering Platform (ATEP™), forming the Elemental-X™ material.
Unlike many alternatives, the scaffold-free process lets cells create their own natural structure, producing leather that is structurally identical to traditional hides. The result is durable, repairable, biodegradable, and fully traceable leather—without the environmental impacts of animal slaughter, deforestation, or chemical tanning.
Professor Che Connon at Lab-Grown Leather said, “Our proprietary advanced tissue engineering platform has once again proven its versatility. By collaborating with VML and The Organoid Company, we’re unlocking the potential to engineer leather from prehistoric species, starting with the formidable T-Rex. This venture showcases the power of cell-based technology to create materials that are both innovative and ethically sound.”
Thomas Mitchell, CEO of The Organoid Company, added, “This project demonstrates how genome and protein engineering can create entirely new classes of biomaterials. By reconstructing and optimising ancient protein sequences, we’ve designed T-Rex leather inspired by prehistoric biology and cloned it into a custom-engineered cell line. It’s a bold example of synthetic biology extending beyond medicine into sustainable material innovation.”
Enfin Levé transformed the prehistoric-inspired biomaterial into a singular luxury handbag, demonstrating that ancient biology can inform the creation of future-facing materials.
The handbag will make its public debut at the Art Zoo Museum in Amsterdam on 2 April 2026, displayed alongside a life-sized T. rex cast from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Positioned next to its prehistoric counterpart, the bag illustrates a bridge between ancient biology and contemporary design. Following a six-week exhibition, the one-of-a-kind piece will be auctioned to the highest bidder.
Bas Korsten, Global Chief Creative Officer, Innovation & CCO EMEA at VML, said, “With T-Rex leather, we’re harnessing the biology of the past to create the luxury materials of the future. The stark reality is that lab-grown leather hasn’t yet convinced the luxury world. Why? Because it feels like an imitation.”
Bas added, “We knew we had to do something radically different. Not a substitute, but something entirely new. So we went back 66 million years in time. The result is a material that doesn’t copy the past but reimagines it. Seeing it realised as a luxury object is a powerful milestone in shaping a new category of sustainable luxury.”
While this first handbag is unique, T-Rex Leather™ will continue to be produced and made available to designers and luxury brands, initially for accessories, with long-term ambitions spanning fashion, automotive, and high-performance materials.
Enfin Levé, under Hadas, is known for blending artisanal craftsmanship with progressive techwear, creating garments and accessories that combine functional innovation with technical precision.
Michal Hadas, Founder and Lead Designer at Enfin Levé, said, “Enfin Levé has always designed through material behaviour and construction logic. With T-Rex leather, the goal wasn’t to impose a conventional luxury object but to understand how it behaves – where it resists, how it holds tension, and how that could shape the design. It has a distinct character and responds unlike any leather we’ve worked with. The final bag follows that logic, letting the material define the object rather than forcing it into familiar codes of luxury.”
