Written by Anaya Shah.
What are the most common questions that come to our mind when we see something we want to buy? More often than not, out thoughts are “What is its price?” “Will it match with my other clothes?” “How often will I use it?”. It rarely occurs to us to consider the real cost of that product: the innocent lives it took to make it.
Here’s why we should consider real cost of the product:
Billions of animals are killed yearly to keep up our demand for fashion. While we enjoy wearing our fancy leather boots and fur coats, innocent animals are killed to feed our vanity.
Most of these animals are reared to be mutilated and killed for the materials they supply. The conditions that they are kept in are inhumane to say at the least. Their shelters are overcrowded, filthy and infected. Most of these animals live in their own filth and never see sunlight in their lives due to their living provisions. After being kept in these horrifying conditions they are dismembered and skinned alive for us to get our precious fashion products.
Some of the most common products that come from animals can be categorized into leather, fur, wool and feathers. The animals affected for these materials are:
Leather: Cows, pigs, lambs, crocodiles, stingrays, snakes, kangaroos, and ostriches commonly used for their skin. Around 300 million tanned cow skins and more than 500 million tanned sheep and lamb skin are produced yearly. The products from the skin of unborn sheep and considered a luxury. Hundreds of millions of Kangaroos are killed for their skin which is often used for soccer shoes. In a lot of cases, snakes are tied to trees and skinned alive. Even alligators and crocodiles are kept in unnatural conditions to be killed for their skin.
Fur: Baby seals, fox, minks, yaks are the most commonly used animals for fur. Over a hundred million animals annually lose their lives over fur. These animals are confined in extremely small cages due to which they develop psychological disorders. It is not uncommon for these animals to break their limbs and teeth in an effort to escape from the cages. While we humans the luxury of our mink fur coats, these poor animals are kept in 12”x 18” cages and live tortured lives.
Wool: Sheep, Alpacas, LLamas and rabbits are the most commonly used animals for wool. While it is common knowledge that sheep are sheared by humans for their wool, not everyone is aware of the consequences of this shearing. More often than not, these animals get burns and large cuts from the shearing process itself. The sheep are made to overbear wool which can lead to eat exhaustion and death in the animals. While some sheep die due to overbearing, others die due to early shearing. The shearing process takes place in the spring after the lamb season; although if they wait too long, it would mean loss of “precious” wool. To prevent this loss, sheep are reared early and die due to exposure to too much cold. Once the use of these animals is over, they are often sold to slaughter houses or left to die in feedlots.
Feathers: Geese, ducks, ostriches and peacocks are used for their feathers. These birds are literally dismembered alive. Their legs are tied and feathers are ripped out of their bodies while they still have feeling in their body. They are not only used for glamorous clothes and accessories but also used in jackets, coats, duvets and pillows. The tricky fact about feathers is that it is nearly impossible to track the if the feathers were ethically sourced.
Since we believe in creating a better environment for humans as well as animals to coexist in, we have come up with a collection of vegan leather products. Our goal is to give our customers a chance to indulge in shopping for high quality products without having to consider the ethics behind it. Here is a list of our collections and what they represent:
(Link to) Leopard Collection: The leopard represents all the big cats and other wild animals that are poached illegally for their skin.
(Link to) Giraffe Collection: The giraffe to represents all the wild animals that are poached for their bones, teeth and other body parts.
(Link to) Koala Collection: The Koala represents all of the animals that have been harmed and lost their habitats to due the number of wildfires taking place around the world every year.
(Link to) Rabbit Collection: This collection represents all the animals that are captured for animal testing. These animals become testing tools for harmful chemicals that we create.
