"These don't look like products you've ever seen from an animal, or from a petrochemical, they're different," Biofabricate CEO Suzanne Lee tells Fast Company.
"They're not trying to cover up the natural quality, they're actually embracing it."
Lee is talking about mushrooms, corn, and shrimp, which were on display last week at the first Biofabricate convention in Paris, held a decade after its first convention brought corn, mushrooms, and shrimp to the French capital to show off next-generation textile materials, Quartz reports.
According to Lee, the purpose of the conference was to educate startups on how to be compliant with new EU regulations on the fashion industry.
"The EU is driving global regulations," Lee says.
"You're really going to kill your business before you even start."
And while athletic brands such as Adidas and Nike were early frontrunners in investing in next-generation materials, they've since backed out.
"Right now it's not looking so good," Lee says.
"The big brands can wait and they have internal teams who work with the innovators to get it to the level that it needs to be to be truly robust for the market."
Meanwhile, luxury brands are now on board with
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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.