“Vegan fashion” is the last frontier of style. A new healthy way of thinking and seeing fashion that has been taking hold in the last few years.
The main purpose of vegan fashion is not to mistreat any animal species or living beings and to “prove” that fur, feathers or leather are not necessary to make quality products.
It can be said that vegan fashion was officially born in 2018 when during in London Fashion Week was banned the usage of real fur clothing was banned. Since that moment many fashion companies began to work, more than ever, on new materials that did not involve animal abuse. The more important mission and struggle of vegan fashion is to create an “animal free oriented” philosophy that could completely stop the exploitation of animals’ lives and the materials derived from themsuch as silk, wool as well as feathers and fur.
“Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion”
The first Vegan Fashion Show of the fashion history, was supposed to be in Los Angeles at the Natural History Museum on February but due to the pandemic it has been postponed to October 2020.
Los Angeles was chosen because it has banned the production, and sale of animal fur quite a long time ago. So one of the most glamourous cities in the world will be the forerunner of this new environmentally friendly way to make fashion.
The ethical fashion is the future and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals) confirms it. PETA is a non-profit organization that stands for the animal rights, this association gives the “Vegan Approved” recognition to those companies which stood out thanks to their contribution to ethical fashion. To gain more popularity, vegan fashion needs to reach some more big brands, in order to promote an “ethically correct” behavior.
“The cruelty free is the new luxury”
There are many brands that are working on this new concept of fashion and that have been awarded with the “Vegan Approved” acknowledgment.
The Italian stylist Tiziano Guardini is one of them. He works with sustainable materials such as raffia and non - violent silk which is obtained without killing the silkworm; they wait for itto become a butterfly, andonce the cocoon is empty it is possible to proceed to the collection. The ahimsa silk (this is its proper name) is not the only innovative material that Guardini uses. The stylist also works with soy silk, a product derived from skins and pods that are processed through spinning and weaving techniques. Soy is a renewable material which does not need many pesticides and contributes to set nitrogen in the ground and is also biodegradable. Instead , materials derived from petroleum such as polyester are really hard to dispose of.
“Design is not just about product. Design is about responsibility”
“Wineleather” is another original and out of the box way to make fashion, the
project won the a prize for being the innovation of the year, for producing a type of eco-leather that is 100%natural and cruelty - free. “Wineleather” recovers the grape pomaces derived from the wine production and re-uses them to create new material.
The architect Gianpiero Tessitore is the creator of “Wineleather”, he wanted to find assessment solution with a low environmental impact which didn’t use synthetic or animal leathers. Together with Francesco Merlino, an environmental chemist and consultant at the University of Florence, Tessitore discovered the high potential of grape pomaces which contain fibre and oils, excellent to produce a vegetal eco-leather. All over the world are produced about 26 billion liters of wine from which is possible to obtain almost 7 billion pounds of grape pomaces to re-use in the production of about 3 billion square meters of “Wineleather”.
Carmen Hijosa is a Spanish designer and entrepreneur who had the brilliant intuition to create a completely natural fabric derived from pineapple leaves. “Piñatex” is the name of this new fabric. The material is fabricated without weaving processes, it is an ecological and biodegradable fibre derived from waste elements of the fruit. It is very cheap and for this reason many companies such as Puma and Camper, have already used it to create several objects: shoes, bags, hats and accessories exclusively made in an ecological and healthy way.
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