“It feels a bit and smells a bit like mushroom, still, but it looks like a piece of old leather jacket,” said Alexander Bismarck, a materials scientist at the University of Vienna.

Over the last decade, companies in the United States, Indonesia and Korea have touted fungal leather as an ethical and environmentally sustainable replacement for both cow skin and plastic.

But in the last decade, companies like MycoWorks and Bolt Threads have begun manufacturing and selling fungal leather products.

Fungal leather is also potentially more sustainable than other leather sources.

The tanning process is energy intensive and produces quite a bit of sludge waste — and the production of synthetic leather requires plastic, which involves oil.

But while fungal leather did quite well in the team’s durability tests, there are still some questions about its long-term toughness.

The fungal leather industry is still in its infancy, and is largely producing proofs of concept for the luxury market: prototypes of Bolt Thread’s fungal leather handbag sold for about $400 when they were available, a similar price to a good-quality leather bag?

Fungal leather products might soon pop up everywhere, like mushrooms after a rain