One Small Step to "I wouldn't be caught dead wearing leather"

Hello,

Well, a little about myself before I begin blogging away.

I am a vegetarian who was inspired to stop wearing leather after watching the extremely thought provoking and moving documentary I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA, which made me realize how much I agreed with PETA’s philosophy that animals are not ours to use and kill for food or fashion.

Though I had already been a vegetarian for around ten years, I guess it dawned on me that the leather industry is separate from the meat industry and that buying leather really does support an entire very tragic industry. Learn more at cowsarecool.com, a website that PETA made to educate people about the leather industry.

I found it a bit shocking that in the fashion world everyone was so concerned about wearing faux fur, but didn’t think twice about buying leather shoes.

For a long time, I had one pair of shoes because I assumed all shoes were made out of leather. One winter I wanted to go on a ski trip but couldn’t find any non leather snow boots. I felt guilty about it but I bought a pair of knock off Ugg like shoes so I could walk in the snow. There was just nothing out there for, despite what PETA says on their websites. I have been to the handful of sites that sell vegetarian shoes like mooshoes.com and vegetarianshoes.com, but I find them very unpleasant to shop at. They all seem to have extremely tacky and outdated design, tiny pictures, weird styles, no sizes in stock, and Vegetarian Shoes has to ship all the way from the UK. I usually browsed, but don’t feel like buying anything when I visit those sites. I want to wear cool shoes such as the ones people of my age are wearing (I am 24) who shop at younger, trendier stores.

I started trying to make a line of vegetarian shoes myself that would sell classic, basic, NORMAL but cool looking shoe staples that were made entirely out of non-leather, but the going proved to be very slow. It’s still going. But in the meantime, I started realizing that there were a lot of non leather options actually available in the stores and websites I liked to shop in. It was just a matter of looking closely at the materials used.

Recently, I’ve been seeing non-leather items everywhere in stores. I think at first I just dismissed these items because they looked so leather like I thought they must be actual leather. But synthetic man-made fake leathers look very real, and are sometimes indistinguishable (to me at least) from real leather.

Another added bonus is that man made leather is also cheaper. I’ve found that if I see shoes or bags for under fifty dollars there is a very good chance they will be made out of non leather.

The cons of buying fake leather items in stores is that you never know for sure if some leather is used in the shoe or bag. Modcloth.com one of my favorite sites often only mentions in their paragraph long descriptions that their items or vegan friendly or faux, but you kind of have to take it on faith. On the Urbanoutfitters website visitors to the site can tag the items as “vegan” but again I have to ask how do these customers know or know for sure?

Well, to sum up, on this blog I will be spotlighting non leather, synthetic man-made lookalike leather shoes, bags, jackets, skirts etc…for vegetarians and vegans. Also I hope to increase people’s awareness that non leather looks just as good as leather because it seems the fashion industry is only “one small step” away from making faux leather just as much of a necessity as faux fur is. I hope one day no one will wear leather and the leather industry will shut down.

If anyone browsing through the blogopshere or interwebs comes across this blog and can sympathize with these feelings and the frustrating task of keeping your beliefs alive and refusing to buy leather, I would LOVE to hear from you and connect with you in the comments section of this blog. What are your thoughts and feelings on the matter??

I hope to hear from someone soon!

Sincerely,

Victoria