Mushroom Leather Is Here. Will Shoppers Care?

In a warehouse outside Oakland, California, the air smells like decaying trees. Workers toss microorganisms onto sawdust to grow mushroom roots into a leathery material. A few hundred yards away in a separate building, a competitor cultivates its own fungi fabric.

These firms, MycoWorks and Bolt Threads, are leading a burgeoning industry to make materials that mimic the feel, durability and smell of leather, but without the animal hides. It’s taken years to get close to the real thing, but now they say their fabrics made with the whitish root of mushrooms, called mycelium, are on the cusp of breaking into a global luxury leather goods market that according to Euromonitor International will hit $78 billion this year.