Attention dear reader, it looks like you're about to enter the fashion maze! Here we present to you the alternatives to leather for 100% guaranteed vegan leather 😉
"Let the story begin"
In recent years, a light has been shining in the fashion world (you can read our article on fast fashion and slow fashion ). Although the textile and leather industries have been making a fortune for many years, new generations have realized that we are not necessarily going in the right direction. If we start looking behind the scenes of this gigantic industry, we come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this. The time has come to preserve our small planet and its inhabitants, bipeds or quadrupeds, not to destroy it.
We thought we needed to shed some light on a topic that concerns us all: leather and its alternatives, which we can call vegan leather . Everyone knows leather for its qualities, but do we really know the behind-the-scenes side of leather?
YOU WILL SEE SCARED FOR A FEW SECONDS
To put it simply, leather comes from animals, so far we're not going to teach you that (well, I hope not). Leather is mainly used in the clothing industry because, once treated with toxic products (formaldehyde, tar derivatives, cyanide-based dyes and other dangerous substances) by tanneries and leather works, this material can be preserved for a very long time . Thus, with the property of being very resistant, leather is an ally of choice for making shoes that we will use on a daily basis. But with all these substances, we're not going to hide it from you, it's not very good for your health.
Leather comes mainly from Asia, particularly China and India. Made on the other side of the world for us Westerners, it is therefore very difficult to really know the origin of the leather we wear . Without wanting to scare you, billions of animals are killed each year to meet the demand of the fashion industry . Not having the same culture as our Chinese compatriots, they do not hesitate to slaughter dogs for their skins (around 2,000,000 according to the association PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
Leather keeps our feet nice and warm and looks rather stylish... but there's one problem. Let's face it, it's not exactly ethical, and we shouldn't have too much empathy for our four-legged friends, whether they're cattle, horses, or even dogs.
So yes, you might say that as hunter-gatherers, humans needed to hunt to wear skins and survive the winter. It's the law of the strongest.
Except that we are no longer in the era of Game of Thrones or the Middle Ages, we can change our way of consuming right now .
Now that I've cooled you down on the subject, we have some good news; there are many alternatives to leather, including vegan leather , and more and more brands and celebrities such as Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) and Stella McCartney are interested in it! We don't have all these materials in our sneakers yet, but who knows what the future holds? Anyway, we'll let you discover some of our finds 🤩
VEGAN LEATHER IS IN VOGUE!
Recycled plastic bottles (our famous recycled PET)
PET stands for "transparent polyethylene terephthalate." Bless you!
More simply, it's the material used in plastic bottles , and in France, we consume an average of between 6 and 8 billion of them per year. A remarkable achievement.
By recycling these bottles, it is now possible to transform them into new materials and this is precisely what SAOLA is committed to doing! The process is simple, we recover these bottles from the oceans or garbage dumpsters, we melt them taking all the necessary precautions, then we transform this new material into yarn ! From there, we are able to make the upper of our ecological shoes from 90% recycled plastic bottles. That's Saola vegan leather . You know everything 😊!
Vegan leather made from grapes
100% eco-friendly, just like the neighbors we will see later, grapes can also be used in a new industry: textiles !
Vegea, an Italian company, initiated the process after observing that out of the 26 billion liters produced each year, it was possible to recover the stems, skins, and seeds of grapes . Rather than throwing them away, we might as well reuse this waste!
100% natural and eco-friendly to be incorporated into our future vegan shoes ? Who would have thought that wine would be used for anything else?
More information on grape-based vegan leather: https://positivr.fr/cuir-de-vigne-vegan/
Pinatex: Vegan leather made from pineapple leaves
Extremely eco-friendly and initiated by Carmen Hijosa, this new label is made from pineapple leaves . Pretty original, right?
Carmen Hijosa has worked in the clothing industry for a long time and has often encountered the ecological and human problems associated with animal leather. Directly inspired by the Philippines, she decided to use the 13 million tons of waste from pineapple production to create this new alternative to leather . Brands such as Hugo Boss and Lancel have already shown interest in this material, not crazy when you consider that this material is sold 20% cheaper than animal leather.
The mushroom, a new arrival
No, no, you're not dreaming, it's actually possible to use mushrooms too!
Founded in 2013 by Philipp Ross, Myco Works is an American start-up that campaigns against leather, just like us. Columbia and Berkeley have already mastered this ingenious process that uses the properties of mycelium from mushrooms . Heated at very high temperatures in molds, this new material is well on its way to quickly replacing crocodile leather in the years to come!
Eucalyptus, more virtues...
Eucalyptus, a favorite food of koalas, is not only used for its natural benefits in medicine. Added to recycled PET , seen below, some brands have already succeeded in making belts . The advantage? It's a 100% vegan leather, quite durable and it's a very good alternative to animal leather.
Cork, used in our soles!
What if, in addition to using cork in our soles, we also used it to make the uppers of our shoes? Still 100% eco-friendly , cork worked and transformed into fabric is known for being soft, very light and waterproof . Practical for shoes with a leather look but vegan.
Imagine ethical shoes with a cork upper and instead of smelling like feet after a day at work, you would smell like wine...
The cherry on the cake is that it is a biodegradable material 🍒
Other vegan leathers are still to be discovered...
This list is by no means exhaustive, and we have other articles in store for you in the future to introduce you to new materials (such as Richard Wool's eco-leather) that will surely inspire us in the months and years to come. We are constantly looking for new, ever more environmentally friendly materials, so if you hear about a new material, we will also be delighted to learn more and study it!
See you in the next article!
