Luxury fashion must stop producing leather goods to be truly ethical
At Milan Fashion Calendar week last September, Kering, the €13 billion (South$20 billion)-revenue luxury group behind Gucci and Bottega Veneta, announced that it would go "entirely fur free" by the end of 2022, post-obit like pledges made by Michael Kors possessor Capri Holdings and Chanel in 2017-18.
The proclamation was chiefly symbolic, an easy win for a company keen to woo young shoppers who say their purchasing decisions are increasingly being driven by environmental and upstanding concerns – and one that will have piffling impact on the lesser line. When Gucci announced it was giving up fur in 2017, information technology accounted for less than 0.two per cent of revenues, and of the grouping's six fashion and leather goods brands, only Saint Laurent and Brioni have yet to eliminate the stuff.
Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering's primary sustainability officer, framed the announcement equally a commitment to "ethical luxury", describing information technology to Vogue Business as "another step forward in our delivery to animal welfare and is in line with our delivery to sustainability".
Yet the ban does not extend to precious skins such equally crocodile and python nor to lamb fur (shearling) or, mayhap about importantly, to leather – and its bear on on the group's Environmental Profit & Loss statement will exist negligible.
Renouncing fur is the correct matter to do. Animals should not have to live in cages and be slaughtered and so that rich people can have new fur coats. The same goes for the reptiles who are farmed or captured so that their skins can be made into handbags and belts.
But where does this leave leather? If Kering truly wants to reduce its environmental footprint, cut back on this mainstay of the industry would be the identify to outset. By the company's ain estimates, leather scoops up more than of its resources than all of the other materials combined.
But it is as well the unmarried nearly important driver of revenue and profits for the company, and the soft luxury goods sector at large. It is responsible for about one-half of sales at Kering, Hermes and Prada. Bio-based alternatives are limited, and dissimilar precious skins and about kinds of fur, leather is mostly agreed to exist a byproduct of the meat and dairy industries.
Most luxury handbags and shoes are fabricated from the skins of young calves, which are smoother and more supple than those of mature cows. Calf skin is worth about 10-fifteen per cent of the total value of the brute when it arrives at a abattoir – significant, but not enough to reduce the number of calves killed if luxury houses were suddenly to become constitute-based.
Brands argue that leather is a "sustainable" pick: That hides generated by the meat and dairy industries would otherwise rot in landfills, generating more methane every bit they decompose.
Only Circumfauna, a inquiry and advocacy grouping, claims that sending hides to landfills and producing alternatives, fifty-fifty if plastics-based, is a amend option, considering the energy and chemicals required to turn them into shoes and handbags is and so environmentally damaging.
Either fashion, luxury brands are helping to fuel a demand for creature products at a time when scientists say we should cutting downward their use. Brute agriculture accounts for an estimated 15-18 per cent of total green business firm emissions likewise every bit a great deal of animal suffering.
As a vegan and an animal lover, I am quietly horrified when I footstep into a brand showroom and run into rows of numberless and shoes made from their hides; my Instagram feed often juxtaposes images of women showing off their new Bottega Veneta calf leather shoes with activist videos of a struggling calf beingness shot in the head.
Perhaps the fashion industry might expect to emulate Volvo, which announced that information technology would eliminate leather from its electrical cars by 2030, citing "the negative environmental impacts of cattle farming, including deforestation" and a want to "do what it can to help end animal damage, by contributing to a reduced demand for these materials containing animal production".
Luxury brands have enormous cultural ascendancy. If they were fully to promote a institute-based lifestyle, it could go a long way towards persuading the balance of the globe to eat less meat and dairy. That, truly, would exist "ethical luxury".
By Lauren Indvik © 2022 The Fiscal Times
Source: Financial Times/ds
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/obsessions/ethical-fashion-luxury-brands-leather-goods-297241
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