To Wear Or Not To Wear
Vegan food’s a great part of veganism, and has become easier and easier to find over the last decade. Any online search for ‘vegan’ will flood your screen with search returns for delicious grub.
But for me, being vegan is about more than what I pop into my ‘laughing tackle’. It’s a complete ethical belief system, encompassing all aspects of my lifestyle, not just my diet.
I continually assess what I’m buying, eating and using to avoid buying into animal agriculture, exploitation, or harm to habitats. The instant I learn a product or company is on the wrong side of my ethical beliefs, I wipe ’em from my life.
And that includes what I wear. But why would our clothing not be vegan? And exactly what clothing should we stop wearing, as committed vegans?
Leather and Suede
Most people believe leather and suede are co-products of the meat industry – and indeed they can be. But not always. Sometimes animals are deliberately bred for the leather industry.
Meaning wherever your leather started out, millions of cows, pigs and goats are being slaughtered and their skins used to make leather clothing, accessories, furniture, sports equipment, car interiors, every year.
But not for my wardrobe.
Public outrage about shoes and handbags made from snake and alligator skins demonstrates (to me) an obscene lack of perspective. Why don’t people feel equally angry about ‘regular’ leather? I’m not claiming that killing alligators for a pair of Jimmy Choos shouldn’t be banned – it clearly should. But surely ALL animal skin is a big fat no-no, especially if you’re a vegan- no? The animal can’t live without its skin. But you can easily live without those cruel slingbacks.
Fur
Several fashion houses have recently – and very publicly – denounced the use of real fur in clothing and accessories. And it’s great to see so many celebrities refusing to work with those that continue to use it. About time, I say.
There’s nothing more barbaric than cramming minks or rabbits into a dirty wire cage, electrocuting them, then peeling their beauty away from them for the sake of a new coat.
The old wives’ way to check if it’s real fur or not is to blow on it. If an exact circle forms, it’s probably actual fur. My way is this: if no circle forms but there’s no label saying ‘imitation fur’ leave it on the rail and find a new shop that properly labels its stuff. It isn’t worth the risk.
Millions of animals are born, live and die inhumanely every year for the fur market. China, where there aren’t even laws protecting cats and dogs from fur farming, has an abysmal track record for animal cruelty. But of course China doesn’t keep its animal products – including those made of fur – to itself. They sell leather and fur in vast quantities to the west, particularly the US and UK.
So unless you want to contribute to that monstrous behaviour, I’d strongly suggest you give anything furry on a coat hanger a wide berth.
Wool
My mum’s a keen knitter, who thankfully shares my view that sheep’s wool is ALL just so cruel that nothing made with it could possibly be considered beautiful! She made the switch to alternatives years ago.
Some wool companies use cutesy logos to tell you they’re friendly farmers – but to me that’s tiresome greenwashing. Wool is cruel. End of. Why?
Well – for a start it’s not ours to take. And for seconds, wool farming is inhumane at best. Many sheep and goats are deliberately bred to be impossibly large, with extra, deeper wrinkles so they yield more wool in the uncomfortable folds of their skin. This traps bacteria and urine, providing the perfect hatching ground for maggots and other insect larvae who are only too happy to eat the sheep alive.
And they don’t just have to grow this thick woollen coat when it’s cold – nope! Because humans love a good woollen sofa or felted tchotchke, or soft toy too, don’t they?
Coping with demand, requires sheep to be bred for high wool yields ALL year round. So they spend lots of time in hot fields with thick, heavy coats, where they regularly die of heat exhaustion and maggot infestations.
And then there’s mulesing – a practice so abhorrent I’d strongly advise you put your cuppa down now while I explain it. Still popular in Australia, mulesing involves cutting strips of flesh from the breech (buttocks) so that wool cannot regrow on the scar tissue. This is supposedly a measure to prevent flystrike.
Ironic. Because for mulesed sheep, this just means being out in a baking hot field with a hot heavy coat, and the additional nastiness of a painful wound on their bottom – which can still attract flystrike before it’s even healed. Revolting.
It’s banned in the UK but since most of our wool comes from Australia it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the issues there.
Silk
The actual purpose of silk, is to create a protective cocoon for the liddle-biddy silkworm in its pupal stage. Note that this purpose is very far removed indeed from ‘having a posh blouse’ or ‘finding a pretty scarf’.
That’s right – it keeps a creature alive. Except the reality is that it hardly ever does – because yet again humans have decided they want the silk more.
So they gas or boil the silkworms to death in their millions. Then they steal their precious cocoons and unravel them to make silk thread. Finally, the factory weaves the thread into posh blouses or scarves and sells them… Probably to people none the wiser that thousands of creatures died horribly for every meter of cloth they’re wearing.
Silk is sometimes labelled ‘barathea’ – but they can’t pull the silk over our eyes, right? Whatever they call it. What it’s actually made from is unwarranted death and needless theft.
Aba
Aba’s not a misspelt Swedish band, but a felted fabric woven from camel hair. It became popular in textile production because it doesn’t pile. So you’ll often find it in mats and rugs for example.
Garnered in a similar way to wool, it’s often cleaned and treated using harmful chemicals.
Poor labour conditions, the widespread culling by farmers of kangaroos and coyotes, and the destruction of vast ecosystems have also been linked to aba production. Plus it’s a high carbon dioxide emission farming practice.
It’s fairly rare in clothing – but not unheard of. It leant its name for example, to the sleeveless gowns often worn in the Middle East.
Angora and Mohair
Angora and mohair are created by literally ripping fur from the live rabbit or goat, respectively. They’re are both hideous materials commonly used to make jumpers kitten-soft and extra furry.
But that rabbit needs its intact skin much more than you need a fluffy top. And that goat would be much happier without a ton of bruises and bleeding sores.
Definitely not vegan.
Feathers/Down
Feathers have a long history with the fashion industry. Exotic feathers were at their greatest height in popularity during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, particularly on hats and capes – and a whole lucrative cottage industry built up around dyeing and assembling feathers.
It was a trend that soon caught the attention of critics. Mrs Etta Lemon, founder of the RSPB in fact refused to allow any of her members to join the suffrage movement, because Emmeline Pankhurst had issued instructions for protestors to wear exuberant feathers when on parade, in an attempt to boost their appearance of femininity. The general craze for flamboyant plumage was bringing some species of rare bird to the brink of extinction, even then.
Many catwalk collections still show off floaty skirts and handbags that use feathers from duck, goose, guinea hen, macaw, pheasant, turkey, peacock, ostrich, and rooster.
Today, whilst exotic feathers still appear on clothing items from boas to ballgowns, companies mostly use down. Down feathers are the softest feathers which grow closest to the bird’s skin, providing a warm, protective layer.
In clothing they’re typically used to add warmth and padding to puffa jackets, and slippers. You’ll also find them in cushions and bedding items.
Most down feathers are removed from ducks and geese during the slaughter process, but it is not uncommon for them to be repeatedly plucked if they’re being grown for the meat market.
Alternative Materials for Truly Vegan Clothes
The fabulous news is that nowadays there are oodles of cruelty-free alternatives, with more being added all the time. Plus anyone with any environmental sense won’t just avoid animal products when we shop: we’ll also pick non-plastic products too. And there are literally tons to choose from.
Organic cotton, linens, and bamboo are usually fairly safe bets, and more common than you’d think. Just remember to check their sustainability, and labourers’ working conditions too.
Some of the fantastically innovative products on the market now include ideas as whacky as fruit-based leathers, hemp cloth, SeaCell (made from seaweed), coconut husk fibres, wood pulp and recycled polyesters. All of them are animal friendly and sustainable.
Whole fashion brands are also dedicating themselves to making only vegan clothing. Vegan Happy, Mat and Nat, Finisterre, and BAM have fantastic ranges to suit pretty much every requirement – and not a single critter has suffered for their product range! With so many brands taking up the challenge, the great news is, your cruelty free shoes don’t need to look like 1970s Cornish pasties any more either! You can dress stylishly, practically, sustainably AND cruelty free.
The New Vegan’s Wardrobe
So now you know what’s what, there comes the task of deciding how committed you’re going to be.
How you curate your vegan wardrobe is of course a personal matter. But I get asked often what I did about my own clothes when I became vegan. And well – it was a journey!
Our clothes often have deep-seated memories attached to them, and I’m also trying to live as waste-free as I can. So when it came to ‘veganising’ my wardrobe, it became a huge trade-off between eliminating cruelty and not being wasteful.
I look after my stuff too. Most of my pre-vegan wardrobe was in really good condition, making it doubly difficult to pull the plug on things.
Mum had knitted me several jumpers that she couldn’t confirm weren’t real wool. She’d also gifted me her old leather jacket when I left home almost thirty years ago. I had some darling little shoes held back from university proms and special weddings. I had scarves and gloves from friends and and key holidays…
And of course there was the consideration of budget. I absolutely couldn’t afford to buy all new everything all at once. And – key for me – I didn’t want to profit from animal products either: I decided early on not to sell any of my non-vegan clothes.
Plus there was the question of where to find vegan alternatives. Let’s not kid ourselves, pineapple pulp shoes aren’t readily available in every UK market town or small city. Yet.
It took me months of deliberation before I finessed my strategy!
But I decided that for me, it was ‘all in’ or not in at all. The non-vegan stuff all over my life just had to go. All of it.
Making a Start
Firstly I was really strict with myself. Everything non-vegan came out of drawers, jewellery boxes and the wardrobe and went into bin bags, instantly. This meant I could see where I’d gone wrong with previous purchases, and identify any stores to avoid in future. I could also prioritise the replacement buys I might need. The bin bags went into the loft for a few weeks, and I continued on with my newly pared-down collection.
I actually had fewer problem items than I’d anticipated. Mostly it was jumpers and scarves – a few pairs of socks, and shoes. A belt, a handbag, a couple of hats… The real issue was more about what some of those items represented. This would require some gut-wrenching decision making.
How Vegan Are My Clothes Now?
After a few weeks, I brought the ‘Bags of Doom’ back down and tipped them all out onto the bed. I separated everything into four piles: sentimental keepers; stuff for my niece to sift through; charity shop donations; recycling. I moved stuff about a bit until I was happy I had everything in the right pile.
The ‘sentimental keepers’ went straight back into the loft – where they’ll probably stay forever. And I have to say – I kept less than I’d anticipated. A couple of ‘mum jumpers’, some gloves from my first trip to NYC, a leather watch belonging to my Grandad…
The recycling went, unsurprisingly, into the appropriate recycle bins, locally.
On her next visit, my niece went through the rest like a dose of salts. She picked out whatever fitted her that wasn’t too ‘old lady-ish’ (little charmer!) and hobbled onto the bus home looking like Santa Claus.
Everything else went to charity the next day.
So now everything non-vegan was gone from my every day life. All except one small nailcare wallet my Grandma bought me when I was twelve, and a pair of hardly-worn shoes with no label. Too worn for charity but too good to throw away, the shoes are perfect for decorating and gardening and will be used until they fall apart. Because – sustainability. Also if I’d got rid of the nailcare wallet I’d not only lose my nail tools (which were plastic and steel), but also I figured, since Grandma bought me it, it’d only go into the loft with the ‘Sentimental Keepers’ anyway – so I may as well just keep on getting use out of it as she’d intended.
Because I had a mountain of clothing to begin with, the only replacement I needed was a couple of pairs of socks – bamboo – for winter. I knew I could get by with everything else as it was. And you know what? I have.
Vegan Clothes In Summary
Now my whole house is as vegan as I can get it. I’m not going to punish myself for attaching value to time my mum spent on a jumper, or a watch my grandad used to wear. I think that’s acceptable. You might not agree, which is fine. Perhaps you can apply a different criteria when you have your own clear-out.
But for now, I’ve done my best – and everything I buy myself going forward will be 100% cruelty free. But I’d love to hear how you’ve managed your own vegan clear out – and why you made the choices you did. Because between us, we might just be able to encourage others to do the same.
Disclaimer: no animals were harmed for this blog. All materials pictured are inherited, gathered on a beach, or imitation fabrics.
