The public's desire for a handbag made of leather created in a lab using cells from a T. Rex was vastly overestimated by the auction house tasked with its sale.
The bag — a blue-black clutch — differs substantially from the image in the promotional photos released when the project was first announced. The auction house estimated the high bid would be between 300,000 and 500,000 euros ($346,000 to $576,000), but bids barely reached $150,000. As reported by Agence France-Presse, "With no precedent to go on, Alexandre Giquello, whose auction house is organising the sale, explained they had to 'come up with a price' that would reflect both the amount of investment required to create the bag and its rarity." The one-of-a-kind piece was designed by avant-garde fashion label Enfin Levé.
The "T-Rex Leather" was created via a collaboration between genomic engineers at The Organoid Company and Lab-Grown Leather Ltd using collagen cells extracted from a fossilized T. Rex. According to a press release, "Using advanced computational biology and AI modeling, scientists predicted and reconstructed the remaining genetic information required to form a complete collagen blueprint."
Lab-Grown Leather's goal is to reduce the impact of traditional leather products and plastic-based vegan leather. The company will produce other T. Rex leather goods and other lab-grown leather alternatives in furtherance of that mission. Despite the sale being a bust, if there is truly no such thing as bad PR, at least people now know it exists.
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