A while back, Ecco Leather was the first to create translucent leather. Now, in collaboration with The Dyneema Project by DSM, they have produced something new: ultra thin leather bonded with Dyneema, claimed to be the strongest fibre in the world.

Dyneema is an Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMwPE) fibre, engineered to overcome abrasion, bending fatigue, compression and creep fatigue. It is 15 times as strong as steel, yet it is still light enough to float on water.

Despite being paper-thin, merely 0.5 mm thick, the new leather is incredibly strong. The material is made in a multi-phased development sequence, which involves pre-tanning, bonding and a series of interim and final-tanning phases. The bonding process needs to maintain enough adhesion-integrity to withstand a battalion of the tanning processes to bring out the leather’s natural qualities.

The result is a new kind of leather, featuring a fine natural surface. The aspect of the Dyneema fabric blends with the leather’s grain pattern and gives the material tensile strength at a fraction of the weight of thicker leather.

Photos: ECCO Leather / Dyneema