Spiking Trend! Desserto’s cactus leather…
Cactus Leather – What is it & how does it perform?
Featured within iconic collaborations with brands such as GIVENCHY, Adidas, BMW and Mercedes-Benz the Desserto’s cactus leather is an innovative vegan leather made from the leaves of nopal cactus. Quite literally growing in popularity within the fashion and design world, we wanted to dig deeper into the roots of this new revelation.
With the purpose of creating an alternative to animal leather, Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez, from Mexico, developed a vegan alternative to leather made with nopal (a cactus), which they successfully showcased in October 2019 in Milan, Italy.
Desserto® offers competitive features compared to animal or synthetic leathers, such as sustainability, performance and aesthetics. The Backing is a knit, 50% cotton 50% polyester – 1mm thickness.
The idea came after the founders worked in the furniture, automotive and fashion industries where they identified that the problem of environmental pollution was very serious. As a result, they were genuinely interested in reducing environmental impact, so they decided to leave their jobs and start Adriano Di Marti, a company to focus on developing Desserto®, which nowadays is known as cactus or nopal vegan leather.
Our innovation team wanted to explore the performance of this new leather. At first glance you wouldn’t think this beautifully smooth, soft touch material was made from Cactus. Made without any toxic chemicals, phthalates or PVC, this leather claims to still offer great performance for a wide variety of applications whilst complying with the most rigorous quality and environmental standards.
We put Cactus leather to the test…
Our experiment features the popular Allermuir Kin Tub designed by PearsonLloyd. Different to its usual construction this chairs plastic shell is made up of recycled plastic waste from The Senator Group. It has then been covered with plant-based foam and upholstered in the Cactus Green, Desserto original material.
We also decided to experiment with waxing our wooden legs with a beeswax supplied by the very bees installed at The Senator Groups head office – closing up the loop completely!
Back to the leather – Here’s what are technical upholstery team had to say on its application and versatility… “We are pleased with the 3D stretch that the material offers, it is nice to handle and can stretch in multiple ways allowing for a much more complex contour. This is something we look out for specially as we offer many design in varying shapes.”
Desserto® offer a range of colours in this new material, so you won’t be limited by choice. We suggest you take a look yourself and let us know your thoughts.
