There was plenty of talk about leather at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow in November, not all of it directly helpful. Fashion designer Stella McCartney generated many of the leather headlines. She used a fringe event at the conference to launch an installation called 'Future of Fashion: An innovation conversation with Stella McCartney.' She claimed to be the first designer to use mycelium material Mylo to make clothes and displayed these as a centrepiece for the installation. To emphasise the point, the clothes were displayed on mannikins that wore curious hats shaped like the caps of Amanita muscaria mushrooms. This attracted plenty of attention and, although the maker of Mylo, Bolt Threads, has told World Leather that its aim is not to replace leather, the designer wasted no time in an interview opportunity with CNN to paint leather in a bad light. She said: "When we take a plant-based bag or shoe into America, for example, we are taxed at 30%. We have a 30% taxation. Leather has none. But if you put a sliver of pig leather onto that same product, your tax is removed. We are penalised, basically. We should be getting a 30% tax break for a vegan product and leather products should have a hit. It's all backwards."
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