Fashion designer Sruli Recht used transparent cow skin leather to create the Apparition collection for fashion brand Ecco.
The collection is the result of a three-year project, during which Recht and a team from Ecco aimed to create the world's first transparent cow-hide leather.

Although transparent leather had previously been achieved with smaller hides, such as goat and sheep, it had been hard like parchment. Recht wanted to create a supple version that could be manipulated to create garments.

"It came out of the challenge of rethinking leather aesthetics in terms of both visual and touch properties," said Recht.
"We asked ourselves what would be the holy grail of leather" I would say it would be creating a futuristic material that still maintains the properties that we know, love, and require from leather."
After studying what other designers had done to achieve translucent leathers over recent years, Recht began to apply up-to-date manufacturing methods to solve practical issues, such as lasting pliability and water resistance.
The result was Apparition, which Recht named after its "spectral qualities and almost ghostlike appearance". This material was then translated into garments and shoes in hues of amber, green, black, orange and blood red.

"The process after creating a new material, a new class of leather even, is to develop it into objects and show what it can do, and then present it as a narrative: how it moves, how it...