Meng Du creates Unwasted bags from grape leather

The Unwasted collection of bags by Chinese designer Meng Du are made with an alternative leather produced from leftover grape skins.

Du created the bags from grape marc, a byproduct of wine production. Grape marc contains the skins, pulp, pips and stems of the fruit that are left after it has been pressed for wine.

Unwasted bags are made from leftover grapes. Photo is by Osman Tahir

Du sourced the alternative leather material from Planet of the Grapes, a French producer of materials and natural dyes made from waste grape skins.

The company produces the textile by collecting grape marc from vineyards in France and drying it under natural sunlight. It is then ground into a powder and blended with natural ingredients to create a liquid, which is poured onto a fabric of natural stem fibres and left to dry again.

The material is a byproduct of the wine industry. Photo is by Osman Tahir

"The entire process takes around four or five weeks, as it starts off with the spreading out and the drying all of the grapes in the sunshine for a couple of weeks," Sam Mureau, co-founder of Planet of the Grapes, told Dezeen.

"After the grapes are truly dried out they are then used to make the grape leather and then once transformed into sheets of material they are left to air dry, which again takes two or three weeks depending on the time of year," she said.

Du shapes the alternative leather over her 3D-printed designs

According to Du, the supple, lightweight material has a lightly textured feel that is reminiscent of the real fruit's texture.

"You can feel the broken down pomace under your fingers and it reminds you from where it came, and that's what adds the character to the material," the designer told Dezeen.

"The material is lightweight and flexible and it has a really natural lustre to it and each piece is unique," Du continued.

The bags come in two irregular shapes

The collection contains two bags: Unwasted Merlot, a larger bag designed to look like a squashed plastic milk carton; and Unwasted Chardonnay, a smaller pack-style bag that resembles a tin can.

Du says that these shape choices are intented to draw attention to the importance of recycling.

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"I found that beverage cartons and cans are often squeezed into strange shapes when they are recycled and to me, this imperfection illustrates the value of a second life," said Du.

"We called the concept Incognito - meaning that an item doesn't look the way you think it will: although it looks like a squashed beverage carton, it is actually a fashion product. And though it looks like it’s leather, it's actually made of grapes," she added.

Around 1,200 grapes were used for the Merlot bag

Around 1,200 grapes are used to create enough material for the large shoulder bag – the equivalent of 0.5 square metres of leather.

Du shapes the leather over a 3D-printed mould by hand in a lengthy process that takes two days for the larger bag and around 30 hours for the smaller bag. The inner lining of both is made from organic cotton.

Every year, approximately 290 million hectolitres of wine is produced around the world, but most of the grapes used in the process are then discarded and left to waste.

Du hopes that these bags will solve some of this waste problem and also encourage consumers to reconsider how their belongings are made.

The Chardonnay bag is shaped like a tin can

"The audience interested in this kind of product may be niche, but hopefully we are moving towards making long-term investments in something more meaningful than the casual fast fashion purchase," said the designer.

The bags are created in partnership with Swedish wine producer OddBird, and are currently available to pre-order ahead of on-demand production later in the year.

There is a growing trend for using fruit waste to create handbags or accessories and grapes aren't the only fruit that can be used. Banana peels were used by textile designer Youyang Song to create Peelsphere, a waterproof material for bags and accessories.

Berlin design students Lobke Beckfeld and Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten developed Sonnet155, a translucent bag that dissolves in water made from discarded fruit peels.

The photography is by Meng Du unless otherwise stated.

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MCQ infuses rice-leather jacket with custom fragrance

Natural latex is combined with rice hulls and a woodsy blend of essential oils to form this scented jacket, created by Alexander McQueen sub-brand MCQ to showcase the unique characteristics of plant-based leather alternatives.

Produced in a limited edition of ten as part of the label's Grow Up collection, the outerwear piece takes the form of a traditional biker jacket but is made from a vegan animal-hide substitute called Mirum.

The material was developed by American start-up Natural Fiber Welding (NFW) and customised for MCQ with an off-white base colour that was created using mineral clay and allows the rice-husk speckles in the plant leather to shine through.

MCQ has created ten leather jackets using Mirum plant leather

The brand also added an earthy aroma using different essential oils, which will linger in the garments for around a year. Designed as a homage to gardening, each of the final jackets is hand-painted with childlike nature motifs by New York artist Kevin Emerson.

"Imagine putting this jacket on and it's not just a jacket," NFW vice president Oihana Elizalde told Dezeen. "There's this scent that adds a different dimension, which MCQ really loved."

"That's something we are starting to explore more and more, particularly in the fashion space."

NFW customised the exact finish of the material for MCQ

Unlike other plant-based leather alternatives, which often rely on a layer of plastic for their durability, Elizalde says NFW's material has been independently certified as petroleum-free and entirely biobased.

Its natural fragrance is directly mixed in with the other ingredients, namely the clay, FSC-certified latex derived from the rubber tree and a number of different vegetable oils.

This is then combined with a filler, for which NFW uses waste materials from the food industry such as coconut and corn husks or, in this case, rice hulls.

Each jacket was hand-painted by Kevin Emerson

After being applied to a backing textile made from organic cotton, the finished material would normally be embossed with a leather-like texture.

But MCQ opted to leave its version completely smooth and supple to keep the focus on the rice-husk speckles.

"They didn't want something that looked like leather," Elizalde said. "It didn't need to have the typical animal grain. They loved this idea of showing off natural materials and this additional granularity that you get by seeing the rice hulls."

The rice hulls create a speckled effect in the final material

The resulting plant leather has a carbon footprint of around two kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of material, Elizalde estimates, based on a preliminary lifecycle analysis.

"It depends on the backer you use and if the backer is dyed," she said. "But the material emits up to 40 times less carbon than leather and up to 17 times less than synthetics."

As a collaborative brand under the English fashion house Alexander McQueen, MCQ brings together a different team of creatives for each of its collections.

In this case, the material is supplied by NFW before being fashioned into leather jackets courtesy of the MCQ team and further personalised by Emerson with a mixture of different paints and markers.

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When it has outlived its usefulness, the plant leather can be ground up and recycled into new Mirum or placed in soil and left to biodegrade.

Due to the natural durability of latex, this will take more than just a couple of months. But Elizalde says the material was carefully engineered to avoid polluting the surrounding environment during its slow degradation process.

"We designed a material with zero synthetics and zero plastics so that when you put it back to earth you don't have the issue of microplastics," she said.

"We also don't use dye or chemicals to alter the material because those chemicals over time will leech out and end up in the water."

The illustrations reference nature and gardening

However, in the case of the jackets, these efforts are subverted by adding the different paints and marker inks, which generally contain some form of fossil-based resin or solvent.

Mirum has already been turned into a number of small accessories such as bags and wallets, while companies from Allbirds to Ralph Lauren have invested in the material in the hopes of integrating it into their products.

The MCQ collaboration marks the first time the material has been fashioned into garments, which will be gifted to "big name VIPs and friends of the brand".

The material has an off-white colour created using mineral clay

A number of major fashion labels have launched products made from plant-based leather alternatives in the last year, although, like the jackets, most have so far been relegated to limited editions and concept pieces.

Among them are various products made from mushroom mycelium, including a two-piece ensemble Stella McCartney and updated versions of the Adidas Stan Smith trainers and Hermès's Victoria shopper.

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