Articles and News
Fish Skin for Watch Bands? Backed by LVMH September 23, 2020 (0 comments)
Saint-Fons, France--Scaling up. A French company backed by LVMH is collecting fish skins that would otherwise wind up in restaurant trash cans, turning them into leather for use in watch straps and wallets, and pitching them at the high-end luxury market, says CMA Luxury.
From the article:
Turning fish skin into leather is an age-old craft. It is experiencing a revival – driven by its environmentally-friendly credentials – but has yet to break into the rarefied end of the fashion industry.
Three friends, who met when studying chemical engineering near Paris and taught themselves the tanning process from scratch, are trying to change that.
(Image credit: Instagram/ictyos_official)
"Salmon skin has a suppleness, and a finesse, it's less than half a millimetre thick, but with a resistance which is nearly equivalent to cow leather," said Benjamin Malatrait, one of the three friends, who co-founded a company called Ictyos.
"It has a grain which is more marked, with the scales that are a bit reminiscent of lizard," he said at his firm's workshop near the French city of Lyon. "Visually it's quite exotic."