I really don't want anybody else's skin in my life. My own is more than enough. They call it leather, nubuk, suede, but whatever you call it - I don't want it. I used to be more ignorant than I'm now, so I used to love it, but not anymore. Someone died for it, for god's sake. Nobody deserves to die so that another bag can be made. Not even a beautiful, gorgeous cultish Chanel bag!
I stopped eating meat quite a while ago and have been really good about it, despite may travels and staying in different parts of the world, often with no vegan restaurants around. If people on my life don't know vegan - I cook for them and they get easily converted. So my experience helped me realize that "I travel so I cannot be vegan" is not a valid excuse. It's very difficult at times, true, but not impossible.
But how about "I want to look good and wear designer clothes but don't want to buy real leather"? Turned out it's way more difficult than eating vegan... Leather is everywhere. It sneaks upon you from every corner of your fancy existence.
It was pretty easy to eliminate leather from my closet - leather and suede pieces sell great on eBay and there are wonderful non-leather options like cotton, linen and wool always available from millions of great retailers (I won't argue with strict vegans here, sheep also suffer a great deal getting cut during wool collection and destroyed after their production cycle is over, but let's keep wool for now). I don't really like to wear synthetic fibers, they don't agree with my body, so this is another limitation but still there are lots of options.
The huge grey concrete wall appeared in front of me when I decided to choose a nice, fashionable purse and shoes to match.
I did preliminary scanning at Saks and Barneys. The only non-leather decent looking bags were super tiny clutches, and they couldn't even contain iPhone 6. Is it a bag for a lipstick maybe? But where will I put my phone, let alone wallet?
I decided to continue searching online since the scope is much vaster. But I was disappointed again...
Of course there are those veterans of vegan fashion like Stella McCartney but her vegan bag designs are crazy, unbelievably expensive. If she promotes veganism, why doesn't she make vegan bags accessible to the general public? Come on Stella - we need you! And we need your awesome bags but for a fraction of their current price. Make a cheaper label of cool bags for us (not the sporty one but a real nice baggy bag one). I refuse to pay more than $300 for a purse. Markups have to justify the existence of a business but hey, what's more important, principles or a dollar note?..
I like chic beautiful bags. I love tiny classical YSL and Chanel chain crossbodies, edgy rocker backpacks by younger generation of designers, iconic Paco Rabanne masterpieces and Chloe purses that are as cute as a button and represent beautiful craftsmanship at the same time. I also love sleek minimalistic designs of Margiela and Anne Demeulemeester, and that whole weird Belgian design direction but for some reason they all love leather! My favorite shoes of all time are calfskin slip-ons with rubber soles by Margiela, and I refuse to give up on them. I still wear them.... But I also refuse to buy new leather stuff.
I dislike cheesy fashions. Bags that look like they belong in Chinatown. I cannot look at Coach bags without a cringe. I never owned a logo Louis Vuitton bag or Tory Burch flats with that huge ugly golden thing on top because in my world they have no right to exist. Which makes my search even harder.
I want neither a simple cheap cloth bag, nor a conceptual fabric tote for a purse because I love bag pockets and can never find anything if it's not organized inside a bag. So all the colorful new age'y and Indian bazaar bags sink into oblivion together with totes. I need a functional bag that won't destroy my spine and would allow freedom to my hands, I already have a vegan tote by V73 (vegan leather bottom is failing shamefully, and the little lock in front has broken off - all after less than a month, ugh)
, a shopper and I don't need another one. It is too uncomfortable for me to carry a bag on one shoulder: if i have a big bag I usually stuff it, so the new one cannot be a purse or a shoulder bag. It should be either tiny - just for phone and wallet, so there is no temptation to stuff it - or a bigger backpack that looks cool. Really cool.
I want to succeed on my quest to find a beautiful vegan bag and vegan shoes to match, but I'm almost ready to give up... majority of vegan bags out there are made in China of fake leather- that ugly cellophaney material with bad crooked stitching and bulging zippers. There are some nylon and neoprene bags that look awesome but most of them are black, and I stopped buying black at about the same time I stopped eating meat...
I assume it's difficult to make a bag out of faux leather look expensive and cool. Otherwise why aren't all the bag manufacturers happily making them and avoiding dealings with toxic leather production? Or maybe that's the question they're not ready to ask themselves, stuck in the belief that leather is the end-all, and that they would lose their craftsmanship if leather trade stops. They're just not ready to diversify. There are generations of bag makers in Italy and other European countries who've been studying their craft for years, and I'm sure are making a very good stable living out of it... For some reason, leather is deeply associated with luxury. Same as expensive perfume, gold and cashmere. It's a symbol of permanence and durability on the physical level, and a desire to possess another living soul on the deeper subconscious level... But I want to believe that we live in an era of nanotechnologies where people fly to space and do microsurgeries on eyes and brain... if anything, barbaric leather use has no place in the new world. New fabrics are ample, and I want to vote for them with my dollar.
After many hours of research in front of the computer screen, with eyes red and maniac-ingly staring into the purse abyss, I finally had an enlightening moment. I decided that there are several directions to go.
For a backpack, find a simple but edgy looking one in neoprene or nylon. This fabric has sleek and sophisticated look if used by a good design house, isn't expensive but is very sturdy. I found a beautiful Courreges white backpack. Courreges, an old French design house, should provide impeccable quality, and the design matches my aesthetic. So I'm done with the "big one" - my new backpack.
For a small one, I decided to go with some fun and funky designs that are not extremely expensive. I won't go for high end stuff like Stella or MSGM yet - maybe one day I will get lucky and find a vegan gem on sale. But for now, I decided to get a corky faux fur clutch and some funky conceptual crossbody.
I found faux fur clutches in different candy colors in Topshop, and a really fun colorful little crossbody by Manish Arora.
The search continues...
I stopped eating meat quite a while ago and have been really good about it, despite may travels and staying in different parts of the world, often with no vegan restaurants around. If people on my life don't know vegan - I cook for them and they get easily converted. So my experience helped me realize that "I travel so I cannot be vegan" is not a valid excuse. It's very difficult at times, true, but not impossible.
But how about "I want to look good and wear designer clothes but don't want to buy real leather"? Turned out it's way more difficult than eating vegan... Leather is everywhere. It sneaks upon you from every corner of your fancy existence.
It was pretty easy to eliminate leather from my closet - leather and suede pieces sell great on eBay and there are wonderful non-leather options like cotton, linen and wool always available from millions of great retailers (I won't argue with strict vegans here, sheep also suffer a great deal getting cut during wool collection and destroyed after their production cycle is over, but let's keep wool for now). I don't really like to wear synthetic fibers, they don't agree with my body, so this is another limitation but still there are lots of options.
The huge grey concrete wall appeared in front of me when I decided to choose a nice, fashionable purse and shoes to match.
I did preliminary scanning at Saks and Barneys. The only non-leather decent looking bags were super tiny clutches, and they couldn't even contain iPhone 6. Is it a bag for a lipstick maybe? But where will I put my phone, let alone wallet?
I decided to continue searching online since the scope is much vaster. But I was disappointed again...
Of course there are those veterans of vegan fashion like Stella McCartney but her vegan bag designs are crazy, unbelievably expensive. If she promotes veganism, why doesn't she make vegan bags accessible to the general public? Come on Stella - we need you! And we need your awesome bags but for a fraction of their current price. Make a cheaper label of cool bags for us (not the sporty one but a real nice baggy bag one). I refuse to pay more than $300 for a purse. Markups have to justify the existence of a business but hey, what's more important, principles or a dollar note?..
I like chic beautiful bags. I love tiny classical YSL and Chanel chain crossbodies, edgy rocker backpacks by younger generation of designers, iconic Paco Rabanne masterpieces and Chloe purses that are as cute as a button and represent beautiful craftsmanship at the same time. I also love sleek minimalistic designs of Margiela and Anne Demeulemeester, and that whole weird Belgian design direction but for some reason they all love leather! My favorite shoes of all time are calfskin slip-ons with rubber soles by Margiela, and I refuse to give up on them. I still wear them.... But I also refuse to buy new leather stuff.
I dislike cheesy fashions. Bags that look like they belong in Chinatown. I cannot look at Coach bags without a cringe. I never owned a logo Louis Vuitton bag or Tory Burch flats with that huge ugly golden thing on top because in my world they have no right to exist. Which makes my search even harder.
I want neither a simple cheap cloth bag, nor a conceptual fabric tote for a purse because I love bag pockets and can never find anything if it's not organized inside a bag. So all the colorful new age'y and Indian bazaar bags sink into oblivion together with totes. I need a functional bag that won't destroy my spine and would allow freedom to my hands, I already have a vegan tote by V73 (vegan leather bottom is failing shamefully, and the little lock in front has broken off - all after less than a month, ugh)
, a shopper and I don't need another one. It is too uncomfortable for me to carry a bag on one shoulder: if i have a big bag I usually stuff it, so the new one cannot be a purse or a shoulder bag. It should be either tiny - just for phone and wallet, so there is no temptation to stuff it - or a bigger backpack that looks cool. Really cool.
I want to succeed on my quest to find a beautiful vegan bag and vegan shoes to match, but I'm almost ready to give up... majority of vegan bags out there are made in China of fake leather- that ugly cellophaney material with bad crooked stitching and bulging zippers. There are some nylon and neoprene bags that look awesome but most of them are black, and I stopped buying black at about the same time I stopped eating meat...
I assume it's difficult to make a bag out of faux leather look expensive and cool. Otherwise why aren't all the bag manufacturers happily making them and avoiding dealings with toxic leather production? Or maybe that's the question they're not ready to ask themselves, stuck in the belief that leather is the end-all, and that they would lose their craftsmanship if leather trade stops. They're just not ready to diversify. There are generations of bag makers in Italy and other European countries who've been studying their craft for years, and I'm sure are making a very good stable living out of it... For some reason, leather is deeply associated with luxury. Same as expensive perfume, gold and cashmere. It's a symbol of permanence and durability on the physical level, and a desire to possess another living soul on the deeper subconscious level... But I want to believe that we live in an era of nanotechnologies where people fly to space and do microsurgeries on eyes and brain... if anything, barbaric leather use has no place in the new world. New fabrics are ample, and I want to vote for them with my dollar.
After many hours of research in front of the computer screen, with eyes red and maniac-ingly staring into the purse abyss, I finally had an enlightening moment. I decided that there are several directions to go.
For a backpack, find a simple but edgy looking one in neoprene or nylon. This fabric has sleek and sophisticated look if used by a good design house, isn't expensive but is very sturdy. I found a beautiful Courreges white backpack. Courreges, an old French design house, should provide impeccable quality, and the design matches my aesthetic. So I'm done with the "big one" - my new backpack.
For a small one, I decided to go with some fun and funky designs that are not extremely expensive. I won't go for high end stuff like Stella or MSGM yet - maybe one day I will get lucky and find a vegan gem on sale. But for now, I decided to get a corky faux fur clutch and some funky conceptual crossbody.
I found faux fur clutches in different candy colors in Topshop, and a really fun colorful little crossbody by Manish Arora.
The search continues...
