A highly publicised T-rex leather bag made from cloned prehistoric collagen failed to find a buyer at a Paris auction on Thursday. Bids for the item decorated with diamonds did not go any higher than 150,000 dollars, far below the estimate of half a million dollars. This auction organised by auction house Giquello at the Hotel Drouot constitutes an unusual failure for this emergent combination of biotech and fashion.
The innovative black bag was created by agency VML in collaboration with The Organoid Company and Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. Using data obtained from collagen found in a 67-million-year-old dinosaur bone unearthed in Montana, scientists successfully cloned T-Rex skin in a lab.
"Advances in biotech make it possible for us to tell cell cultures how to create true T-Rex skin," said palaeontologist Iacopo Briano, who worked with the auction organisers. As Iacopo noted, this is an absolutely real product that differs radically from imitation leather made out of plastic.
In order to decide upon an appropriate price for the item, Alexandre Giquello, the main auctioneer, needed to take into consideration both the tremendous amount of money invested into studying its scientific value, as well as its unique rareness. Alexandre valued the prehistoric biomaterial somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 euros. Nevertheless, wealthy collectors seemed uninterested, most likely out of concern about the controversy around the ethics of using prehistoric animal remains as commodities.
Although exotic skins of crocodile and ostriches may still be considered status markers, these days, the sustainable luxury clothing industry increasingly makes use of the new technology of bio-designing textiles. Recently, leading fashion companies have tried their hand at using bio-engineered silk protein yarns and mycelium leather produced from fungal networks.
However, this particular biomaterial from prehistoric times was not quite the thing that attracted the attention of those involved in the luxury market. Apparently, although sustainable innovations change people’s wardrobes, the demand for artificially reconstructed prehistoric predators seems limited.
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