Sustainable alternatives to animal-based fashion

Leather has one of the highest carbon footprints of any material used by the fashion industry, placing it high on the agenda for brands to find alternatives to meet sustainability goals.

Plant-based alternatives, including materials produced primarily from food waste such as pineapple, grape and apple waste, have gained attention as some of the innovative solutions to this problem. But they have also been criticized for often using PU coatings to make them more durable, preventing biodegradability.

At Future Fabrics Expothe largest trade fair for sourcing responsibly produced materials, which took place in London in June and will host its edition in New York in November, the leather solutions on offer are diverse. Each exhibitor is carefully vetted to meet the show’s sustainability standards, and this includes alternatives to both plant and animal sources. From unconventional leathers, to recycled leather and regenerated leathers, it seems that there is still a place for animal skins in the fashion industry alongside the very popular vegan leathers.

“We are for solutions for many problems. There is no one-size-fits-all style,” says Nina Marenzi, CEO of The Sustainable Angle, organizer of the Future Fabrics Expo. “We need to diversify the fibers of the portfolio, because that’s one of the biggest problems we have right now. This is largely due to leather, conventional cotton and polyester. So having a lot of choice and communicating what’s behind that choice, I think that’s where we can be helpful right now,” he says.

Exploring a variety of skin types is also smart for business. Danish fashion brand Ganni banned virgin leather from their products at the start of the year after finding it had the highest footprint in their material mix. In February, he launched footwear using Pélinova Recycone of the Future Fabrics Expo exhibitors. Pélinova is an amalgamation of recycled leather waste from factory cutting room floors and sustainably sourced lyocell from Lenzing, which claims to have less than 10% of the carbon footprint of conventional leather and costs at least 30% less than most European skins.

However, Ganni is not only working with Recyc, but also with plant- and bacteria-based skin alternatives. “We have a platform called Fabrics of the Future where we are constantly testing new fabric innovations and working to make them part of our core product offering,” explains Lauren Bartley, Ganni’s head of sustainability. “It’s very important to cast the net wide when it comes to skin alternatives. We rely heavily on often small startups that need investment and commitment from brands in order to scale and commercialize, which means we can’t just bet on one innovation to succeed.”

Last year, materials innovators Bolt Threads announced it was discontinuing production of its Mylo mushroom leather alternative, despite support from big fashion names including Kering, Adidas and Stella McCartney.

When considering whether plant-based leather or animal-based leather is the best choice, consumer sentiment is another factor to consider. Plant-based leather-like materials have the advantage of being free of harshness, which is non-negotiable for some brands and consumers, and carry connotations of novelty and innovation. However, particularly in the luxury sector, conventional leather is still widely associated with quality. More unique types of animal skin can retain this advantage.

Luxury Swiss watch brand Oris has been using sustainably sourced deerskin for its watch straps since 2017. It sees its partnership with supplier Cervo Volante as a storytelling opportunity, as well as a sustainability draw.

Oris co-CEO Rolf Studer says: “Our consumers seem to really appreciate the story behind these straps and also see the quality when they wear the watch. We get a lot of requests for more information as people want to dive deeper into the history of Cervo Volante and our partnership,” he says.

In Switzerland, the wild red deer population is culled to avoid forest damage, crop damage and road accidents. Before the Cervo Volante was released in 2016, skins from it would go to waste. Today, the company reuses between 1,800 and 2,500 hides per year to make leather shoes and accessories using vegetable tanning processes.

Studer says: “The leather from Cervo Volante shows the signs of a life lived to the fullest in the wild. There may be mosquito bites or scratches from fights. This is pure nature, these deer have lived a free life in forests on the Swiss mountains. And with the tanning done using all organic ingredients and based on very traditional methods, we also get a product that wears down very nicely over time, it really becomes a very personal strap after a while.”

Oris does not currently work with plant-based leather alternatives, having not been convinced by the quality or sustainability of the ones it has seen, although it says it would not rule it out in the future.

For both animal and vegetable leather suppliers, saving waste is a common denominator. While conventional leather is also a by-product of the food industry, beef overproduction is a major contributor to climate change with the journal Science finding that every kilo of beef consumed adds 99.5 kilos of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases to the environment. Reducing cow farming is necessary to tackle the climate crisis and this leads to the use of less conventional forms of agricultural waste.

Another popular booth at the Future Fabrics Expo was IKTYOSa French-based producer of vegetable-tanned fish skins whose clients include Alexander McQueen and Zadig & Voltaire. Co-founder Emmanuel Fourault says: “Today, we eat some fish and some meat, and we have the skins from both. The only viable solution is to reuse the skin into skin because if we don’t do that, we have to throw it away.”

Fourault says that in Europe, 500,000 tons of fish skins are wasted every year.

Its unusual nature often sparks curiosity, Fourault says: “The first thing people do when we say this is a fish is smell it. When they see that it doesn’t smell like fish, it’s good.”

The cost on average is 20 euros per skin which is on average 0.2 square meters.

ICTYOS produces both smooth leather and some with a scale pattern which makes it attractive to brands that use exotic hides that often come from farms that are bred just to use the hides. He has also developed a way to glue skins together in panels, without sewing, to create larger sheets.

Innovation is also happening in the vegetable leather space and many suppliers are now able to offer plastic-free solutions.

Despite the many options, brands still face a difficult trade-off that must balance cost, quality, and the various environmental and social impact factors that vary by material.

Merenzi says consumers share this conundrum: “I think trends and consumer choices definitely affect brands, but I would think it would lead to a plethora of choices,” she says. Merenzi reports that many vegans and vegetarians find that avoiding leather for shoes and bags can be prohibitive in choice and cost, so they need to make compromises in their personal lives and therefore understand when brands need to do the same.

There may not be perfect solutions yet, but progress is still necessary, says Merenzi:

“Now, better than ever, there are so many different options. Well, I think just to say, “Oh, we’re going to keep running the way we always do,” that’s completely unacceptable. I think we can all agree on that.”

Her advice to brands is to understand the impact of their current supply chain, ask the right questions and create long-term partnerships to help existing suppliers transition to sustainable practices and help new, innovative suppliers scale.