Why choose vegan fashion?
What is vegan fashion?
In a nutshell, vegan fashion is made without using any animal ingredients. Sound simple? In theory it does. It means not using animal-derived fabrics such as leather, feathers, wool, silk or fur. While fur may seem like an obvious animal product, many people don’t realise that silk or wool also come under the umbrella of non-vegan fashion.
Veganism is all about respecting and protecting the rights of animals, and fabrics such as silk, which involves boiling silkworm cocoons in order to extract the silk yarn, are definitely not vegan-friendly.
Many companies are already using leather and fur alternatives and synthetic fabrics, or they use those that come from plants such as cotton or bamboo, or new sustainable textiles such as lyocell or Piñatex.
Wait, there’s more…
While it’s easy to see which fabrics are made from animal derivatives, things get tricker once you take all the many components used to make clothes, shoes and accessories.
These include dyes, buttons, glue – anything that goes into making the final fashion item. It can therefore be tricky to work out if your item is truly vegan.
How can you be sure your fashion is truly vegan?
To be completely certain that you’re buying vegan fashion, PETA has a growing list of PETA-approved vegan brands, for all aspects of your life.
They verify the whole production process, ensuring that anything going into the garment is animal-free. Our Bare Store also contains only vegan-friendly fashion items.
Why choose vegan fashion?
Veganism seeks to exclude all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to animals, whether that’s for food, clothing or any other purpose. It basically promotes animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and environment
So, by choosing vegan fashion, you’re not only looking after animals, but also our planet as many of the factors that make the production of clothes kind to animals, is also kinder to our world.
The impact of fast fashion in our planet
Sadly, the fashion industry is not very good when it comes to sustainability.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, it accounts for up to 10% of global dioxide output, which is more than international flights and shipping combined! It also accounts for a fifth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced across the world each year.
What’s more, 360,000 tonnes of textiles thrown away in the UK every year are clothes, with the average item of clothing only being worn 10 times before being discarded.
What’s more, ways that some animal-derived products are farmed are creating many environmental issues.
Cattle farming, for example, is immensely water-intensive and a leading cause of deforestation because cows require so much feed. Let’s not also forget that cattle are the leading 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide, thanks to their might production of methane, so by using vegan leather alternatives, such as mushroom leather, we’re not just looking after the animals, but also the environment.
It is worth remembering that some of the vegan alternatives to fabrics, such as leather, do contain synthetic materials, even plastics, which obviously isn’t great for the environment but there are more and more vegan fashion companies that are also ticking the sustainability boxes such as Native shoes, Plant Faced Clothing and Rozenbroek, who make all their clothes from their solar-powered factory in Yorkshire!
As a passionate vegan and creative director, Bare Fashion’s founder, Rebekah Roy believes that vegan, sustainable clothing can be fashionable – and it can also be truly innovative. By buying clothing and accessories that bring us joy, we also buy less – all of which has a positive impact on our planet.