A close friend of mine once worked for one of the main distributor of a very famous brand of luxury leather bags. And honestly it’s quite the trill when your close ‘buddy’ is part of the actual fashion web…sort of gives you a chance to live out a ‘The Devil wears Prada’ or ‘Ugly Betty’ moment. But glamour aside, his experience with the firm gave me an insight as to how confused many are about how leather, animal cruelty and eco-sustainability come together and just how irresponsible large brands can be when they exploit the confusion to boost sales.
Now he once told me about meeting with a potential client – hardly anything/any one small and certainly not an individual, it was in fact a large Airlines company. The sales and marketing team was there to close the deal with them and just as they thought it was in the bag, someone from the client’s team asked a very peculiar question, “ Now I understand that you say your bags are eco-friendly but are they animal friendly?”.
The question I’m certain caught the Sales team by surprise and even though they clearly knew what the answer to that question was they weren’t sure if such a seemingly simple question was one of genuine ignorance or if it some form of trickery to test their integrity. In my opinion, either way they answered they would have lost the account but I suppose when they went, “ We’ll get back to you on that one” they practically sealed the deal as good as over.
So really as silly as that story was, it is a true account and that just goes to show consumers, bless their hearts although they care for the environment and animals, are unclear about how these two criteria meet in the world of leather goods. And nasty sales/ marketing people who won’t answer the question without bidding around the bush are doing the misunderstanding no better.
Well let us now clear that up.
Firstly, leather is not 100% eco friendly because the process of turning “skin” into leather involves tanning. And whilst you may say certain tannin process such as vegetable tannin has reduced impact on the environment, to say it is completely harmless is a blatant lie.
Secondly, leather is made from animal skin. That means an animal (or many animals) had to die to ‘contribute’ their skin to the leather industry. Since I have seen any animals actually volunteer to ‘donate’ their skin upon their natural deaths, it’s pretty clear they had to be murdered for it. You might hear some smart sales person say “Oh our leather is made only from the skin that is the byproduct of the meat industry” or “We made these from road kill”, but that really doesn’t change the fact that animals died for your bag. Even with road kill its cruelty because you’re just ripping apart what is essentially left of a victim of a road accident.
So in summary, if you love the environment and you love leather then look for leather that has been processed responsibly (vegetable dye, etc) but if you love the environment and you love animals, then forget leather because it can never be both.
