Fashion and celebrity labels are increasingly forging licensing deals for “vegan leather” handbags and footwear, in which the items look like leather but are made from substitutes such as microfibers or PVC plastic.
A case in point: Just this week, the Carlos Falchi brand signed a deal with Accessory Headquarters (AHQ) for a handbag collection made of PETA-approved vegan leather, to launch in spring 2017. This follows a similar AHQ line, announced in July, under the Hayden by Hayden-Harnett brand, also for next spring. (AHQ put a traditional leather Hayden-Harnett accessories range on hold to introduce the vegan collection.)
Other examples in the last couple of years include the Saban Brands-owned Macbeth label, which introduced three shoe collaborations with the music acts The Maine, The Gaslight Anthem, and Sleeping with Sirens, all made of vegan materials; designer and socialite Cornelia Guest, who created a capsule collection of vegan jackets with Project Gravitas, an online apparel brand, and also has a line of vegan handbags; and actress Pamela Anderson, who partnered with Amélie Pichard, an accessories designer, for a range of vegan handbags and shoes.
The category is particularly attractive to celebrities and designers who strongly back animal rights and live a vegan lifestyle, as is the case with Guest and Anderson. Stella McCartney, who offers a wide range of vegan handbags among her collections, is another example.
Of course, synthetic leather has been in wide use for many years. In the past, most of the products were intended as cheaper substitutes for real leather, often made from PVC (“pleather”). While these types of goods still exist, the segment has evolved over time. Products are now more frequently made of microfibers and positioned as high-end, cruelty-free, sustainable alternatives to traditional leather; consumers are more apt to perceive them as “vegan” rather than “fake.” This transition has, especially over the past five years or so, made the category more attractive to fashion and celebrity licensors.
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