Over the past few years, fashion trends have changed across the globe and still evolving continually. A few of the trends only remain for a few months, whereas others stay for the foreseeable future. Over the past few years, we’ve seen immense growth of a new fashion era that you might probably have heard of – the vegan fashion. Vegan fashion has become increasingly popular and for good reasons – its environmentally friendly and animal-friendly, a style that has greatly transferred the fashion industry.
What Is Vegan Fashion?
Also, vegans only eat plant-based foods; veganism is a lifestyle that avoids exploiting and harming animals in different areas of life as long as possible. Moreover, beauty products, clothing, and food are some of the biggest contributors to the suffering of animals.
Vegan fashion is a way of producing and buying apparel and accessories that don’t include animal exploitation. Vegan clothes are usually free of any material acquired from animals like wool, leather, and fur. Also, they exclude glues, buttons, and any other thing derived from an animal.
Why Vegan Fashion Is The Way To Go?
There are different reasons why you should opt for vegan fashion. For starters, it’s because you do not want the animals to suffer, particularly if you have alternatives that are better than the non-vegan peers.
Some may choose to purchase vegan clothes since animal agriculture has a big impact on the environment and minimizing the number of animal products you purchase is the easiest and biggest thing you can do for the environment.
Also, you can consider vegan in case you’ve got skin issues. Many non-vegan materials are significantly treated with chemicals, the most natural and skin-friendly materials are all vegan.
Stop Exploiting Animals
Animals are not machines, they are conscious beings and aren’t here to be exploited by us. We don’t have the right to cause suffering or kill them for silk, wool, leather, or any other thing. It’s wrong to kill a living being for shoes or keep it for months in a crowded place so that they can produce sweaters.
For those wondering what vegan fashion is all about and how they should go about purchasing it, below is everything you should know:
Vegan And Non-Vegan Clothes
In simple terms, a vegan wardrobe doesn’t include any fur, feathers, cashmere, wool, leather, or silk. If you wear clothes featuring any animal byproduct, then you aren’t a vegan. You should keep a watchful eye on the trimmings and detail.
Ensure Vegan means sustainably
Not buying animal products will not automatically make your clothes good for the planet. This is because there are numerous products labelled vegan, but are made from synthetics derived from fossil fuel. These are hard to break down and eventually end up harming the oceans.
Find vegan-friendly alternative materials
Delving into vegan fashion largely means digging into the processes of how textiles are made, from leather made from corn to soybean cashmere. Furthermore, linings like duck or goose feathers in the puffer jackpots could be replaced with down derived from flowers.
One of the most daunting things when shopping for vegan-friendly fashion is finding eco-friendly options for leather because most of the vegan leather is made from plastic, which isn’t environmentally friendly.
Benefits Of Vegan Fashion To The Environment
Raising sheep for wool, cows for milk, and some other animals for fur, has a disastrous impact on the environment. These animals are responsible for water pollution, soil degradation, deforestation, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Some vegan materials such as cotton could also be toxic but are still very eco-friendly as compared to the materials derived from animals, particularly if consciously consumed.
We could say that leather is a byproduct of the meat sector, so it’s typically reducing the waste by using every part of the slaughtered animal. Although this is technically true, it should not be the reason why you should continue to buy leather.
Vegan Fashion Is Sustainable
While some vegan leather is made from plastics, which aren’t sustainable, it means the vegan fashion isn’t perfect. However, there are many brands offering vegan leather made out of plants like mushrooms, apples, and pineapple leaves. Some of the brands using recycled plastics can also help deal with the issue of plastic waste that we’ve already created.
Nowadays, you can easily find vegan clothing, accessories, bags, and shoes made of highly sustainable materials and don’t produce any plastic pollution.
Vegan Clothing Brands
There are numerous vegan-friendly fashion brands available today. With the movement growing larger, more fashion brands are choosing to become more vegan, cruelty-free, and eco-friendly in their approach to apparel.
Some of the vegan-friendly fashion brands out there include sisterhood, Expressions NYC, Hiraeth, Insecta Shoes, and BC Footwear.
References
Jill Treanor & Dan Ascher. (2019, August 31). How veganism is taking the step from kitchen to closet. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49409405
Reuters Editorial. (2018, December 19). ‘Pineapple leather’ offers vegan fashion alternative. U.S. https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/pineapple-leather-offers-vegan-fashion-a-idUSKBN1OI1B6
Leather? At vegan fashion week, it’s pineapple leaf (Published 2019). (2019, February 7). The New York Times – Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/style/vegan-fashion-week.html