Animal products in fashion - Topic of the day 2/20/24
Wool, feathers, fur, and leather have been mainstays of fashion since forever. What is your view on animal products? Do you see a difference in buying new vs used or vintage?
65 Replies
For some reason smaller leather items (bags, belts, shoes) don’t register to my brain as animal products in quite the same way as say, big leather jackets or something do. So I’d like to retool my thinking a little and try to look for those secondhand more if possible.
The only animal product I have a problem with is probably fur due to the conditions within the fur trade. Think its worth looking for secondhand fur if possible.
The rest I really don't care about personally. Wool doesn't even involve the animal dying so it is completely different anyway to me.
I try to only buy leather secondhand (all of my jackets and ~half of my shoes)
No interest in fur or goose down because of how those are collected, but if I were then I'd only feel comfortable buying that secondhand too
Isn’t it a debated thing that leather can be better for the environment than faux leather
Because you’re using scraps of a cow vs chemicals that pollute an environment
It's basically a pick your poison thing. I never got the shoe nerds with massive collections who felt they were doing the environment a favor
I feel like more people are concerned about the ethics than the environment wrt vegan fashion
Are there places that specifically kill cows for leather and not meat though?
The leather industry also has plenty of issues: generally being part of/supporting the meat industry which has various terrible externalities, the process of leather tanning is also a large industrial thing. Veg tanned is technically not as bad but this is about where my knowledge runs out
I get the ethics of beef farms being bad but that’s an evil that will be there for the foreseeable future. Isn’t it more ethical to use the whole animal rather than scrap it?
If we had to
I agree with you, I'm not vegan
Not really that I'm aware of. It's possible someone like Hermes does so. I'm not sure how calf leather figures into it vs cow hides either
My views on animal products in fashion are the same as my views on eating meat... I would like to reduce my consumption but beyond that I dont actually care that it is a dead animal
I personally think this kinda breaks down once you move beyond really small scales. It might be more "ethical" but the leather industry isn't carbon negative or anything
I'd imagine you're supposed to do some sort of utilitarian calculation of suffering of animals caused by the factory farming system vs suffering of humans from pollution. I do fear telling ourselves that leather is just a byproduct of the meat industry is just a bromide.
Imo trying to minmax ethics in fashion is just as hopeless as trying to minmax price/quality
it all sucks, the best thing you can do is consume less and buy things that are already out in the world
It also depends on your values. Are you taking the animal suffering angle, carbon emissions, plastics, chemicals in the env, etc.?
(Of course, that's an impossible task. My gut feeling is to come down on the side of animals, even though I do buy leather products and eat animals. But I don't feel great about it!)
The best thing of course would be to just not buy it
I agree with Jibba, I've always felt that the dismissive "oh it's a byproduct of the meat industry" was reductive and not an interesting or meaningful contribution to the conversation
There are a lot of interesting faux leathers out there and in development now. Some I believe are not plastics-based
Fur is a really cool material but I feel like I want a large neon sign that says "I got is used" or "it's a family heirloom" floating above my head
it's unethical to waste too, so if an animal has already died for a leather jacket and it never gets worn like that's not good either
like even secondhand fur, when you think about where it came from it really sucks
but wouldn't it be worse if it was in landfill
tbh the best part is that used leather goods are almost universally better than new
Like great, you killed this animal and now it's garbage
I think the vegan argument is that beef is cheaper because there's a market for leather hides... if that market didn't exist then beef would be more expensive, potentially causing people to consume less of it
Disclaimer: I'm not vegan/vegetarian
Yeah its so durable that there's a lot of it available, generally cheaper and better quality in my experience than buying new
That claim was debunked, no?
Something about farm subsidies being way more than hide prices?
I've also heard this and it makes sense. But only at a econ 101 level. I haven't actually seen any hard info about whether that's true or not
ag subsidies will dominate pretty much anything in the US
Interestingly, it would directly contradict the "byproduct" argument. The way it would work is that: leather demand leads to greater supply of the cows, and so lower price of their meat. At least in my interpretation. But that would directly mean that leather supply is at least somewhat independent of meat production.
Right! All it does is make margins slightly higher but in a sweet spot where ~no one is raising cows/calves for leather
I was going to get a minor in environmental/supply chain analysis but then I switched majors to be a tech dweeb
I would love to see more animal products, including fur, and fewer synthetics. I don't really have a good sense of the realities of how leather, fur, etc. are produced, though.
Yeah, I think of it as kind of a subsidy for the meat industry. There probably aren't a substantial amount of cows, particularly, being raised only for their leather. But it does raise the profit margins for cattle, and therefore more are produced. So if you care about the suffering of those cattle, you are probably contributing it it on the margin. That's the utilitarian argument. In a more deontologicial sense, you can ask yourself if you want to participate in an industry that you might deem ethical or unethical, or decide for yourself if how much you want to limit your participation through things like buying used. At the end of the day, by far the best thing you can do for animals (and climate change) on an individual level is to limit meat or to try to eat more ethical meat, so would be the place to start if these were major concerns imo.
Fur is pretty heavily regulated now afaik. Even as a natural product tho producing it at scale is pretty terrible esp from the standpoint of animal well being ethics
I don’t like fur - and tbh I’d decide to avoid buying from brands that use fur.
Wool, I’m okay with although there are still ethical concerns there.
Leather…i think it can be a bit simplistic to say it’s just a byproduct, because obviously there’s a value and a demand ascribed to leather in its own right. I eat meat though, so I think as long as an animal isn’t solely being used for leather alone, then I’m…comfortable with it (for want of a better word)
I would say that I really try not to be wasteful with leather purchases though - much more so than, say, non animal fabrics. Although I guess this all swings back to trying to be more mindful in general
Wool is tricky. Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't sheep been bred to the point that it's like a health risk if they're not sheared regularly?
Yeah. The whole concept of domesticated animals as products is kinda fucked. Turkeys and chickens that literally can't fuck bc they've been bred for massive breast meat. Sheep that have to be sheared. obscenely fat cows
To say nothing of like..Uniqlo/disruptor brand cashmere
It's the area where PETA gets a lot of flak but they're kinda right...
I grew up on a sheep farm and we did wool. Sheep basically don't survive without human intervention and largely have terrible lives. Shearing might not "hurt" them but it sure causes distress and sometimes injury and we normally lost a few every shearing season.
Yeah, I have to admit that vegans do have a point. But I think the uncomfortable reality is that it's practically impossible to unwind our dependence on animals for food, clothing, and everything else.
this feels a bit reductive, there are dozens of millions of vegans globally who have eliminated animal products in food, and many of them in clothing and other aspects of their lives
in other words, it's incongruous to me that millions of people have done the "practically impossible"
This has been a really interesting thread to follow along, definitely learning some things that have me questioning what I believe to be "ethical consumption."
I don't think Jfarrell's point is that it's practically impossible on an individual scale, but on a global scale it is challenging
Because making a switch from animal to non-animal product consumption isn't necessarily trivial
I don't think the challenges come from practicality, but rather from a lack of desire/interest of most people
you devolve v quickly into "we live in a society". Doing anything at a +100mm people scale ends up with problems
I agree, but it's also education and awareness that would instill someone to know why it is something they may think is worthwhile
"education and awareness" is the biggest scam for activism imo
It's also worth noting that, because capitalism, switching away from animal product also means a whole slew of new and different ways indigenous/local populations can be harmed. See: soybeans.
What's the stat? People read some book or whatever about how the modern meat industry is terrible and they become vegan/vegetarian and a full 70% are back to their old diet within 6 months or something
mhm interesting, I wouldn't call that a scam though. Someone has to learn about it in some way, whether they choose to stay with it seem slike a harder thing to reinforce
I appreciate GSH's points tho. Perfect is the enemy in these discussions
Would rather see people move towards a direction of less animal consumption that is within their comfort level, and see that expand over time
It's just the vegan/vege version of "personal carbon footprint" bullshit. The easiest way to get people to stop eating meat in the US is to have it properly compete in the capitalist marketplace and get rid of the subsidies
Meat becomes wildly expensive, suddenly people have to stop eating it. boom millions of people become 1/week carnivores basically overnight
(ignoring the massive collapse of the meat industry and all of the jobs ofc)
Absolutely, but that is also not a simple thing to do
personal education/individual efforts just aren't ever going to make a systematic change imo
it's way simpler than trying to get millions of people to individually make the same choice that's harder, requires more effort, and is more expensive
for the rest of their lives
I mean the legislative push to making that a reality is not simple
the results from it, however, would be substantial as you mention
It's the simplest, changing the diet of ~300mm people obviously isn't simple
fur saw huge changes for example because of how expensive it was already
Are you actually reducing your plastic footprint by opting for Leather shoes over Pleather ones?
Animal husbandry produces plenty of plastic waste: disposable gloves, syringes, food storage, ect.
usually the argument is that good quality resoleable leather shoes, if well cared for, can last for decades while pleather shoes (especially those from 5+ years ago, think flaky polyurethane) degrade more quickly and end up in landfills and also release plastic into the environment while they degrade. however, some companies are doing much better versions of vegan leather / pleather these days
Never seen this broken out before. But in general I think buying less or buying secondhand has a bigger impact than buying the "most sustainable" new thing
lifecycle analysis is incredibly difficult, esp for consumer products. It's nigh impossible to truly track where uniqlo gets the cotton for their tees for example
Sure, but that argument doesn't account for the plastic waste produced in the sourcing of that leather. Veterinary care industries go through huge amounts of single use plastics, for example.
So one pair of leather shoes may outlast 5 pairs of plastic ones, but that doesn't mean 5 times less plastic in our landfills.
If you opt for leather over plastic
Unless you're willing to get a PhD in the lifecycle analysis of footwear I don't think you're going to get a clear answer tbh
Entirely okay with buying anything made of animals that arent endangered, I eat meat anyway so..
A lot of the alternatives for things like wool and down just arent as good.
Once again buying second hand is preferable.
Necro response but although the sheep is not killed in wool harvesting, the conditions for them can be pretty bad and the kinder shearing techniques tend to he too slow for massive farms so they opt for ones more harmful for the sheep
This is not to dissuade anyone from wool but just so people can be more informed, there are plenty of places that source wool from better farms so if its a concern for someone its worth looking into where a fashion company sources their wool from
Honestly i shouldn't have replied to this question I don't have anything to add. I eat meat and I have no real interest in reducing my consumption of animal products. Obviously if theres a more ethical way I'm not opposed to that but overall this isn't something that bothers me very much.
I agree and still call myself a vegan despite occasionally purchasing vintage clothing made from animal textiles.
But many vegans object to wearing of even second-hand leather products on the grounds that wearing leather makes one complicit in the ideological construction of animals as commodities or resources.
The only fur that I've looked at is possum fur because they tend to be trapped in the wild and are a pest here. But I haven't seen much of it.
I don't lose sleep over animal products in fashion: wool/leather etc. There's a couple of millenia of history of animals raised for meat/fur/feathers. I've worked livestock adjacent jobs and... at the end of the day they're animals. They exist to make money. Of course, cruelty is wrong. But farming animals for slaughter is not something I would lose sleep about. Or even shearing an animal.
Veal is probably where calf comes from?