PAST ISSUES
ISSUE No. 8 ANIMALS
In this issue we explore the animal kingdom - from the threats facing our animal cousins to the incredible lessons to be learned across species lines.
The Falabella bag designed by Stella McCartney is highly coveted in the fashion world. There are several versions of the bag in different colors and “skins”, but they are all vegan and made of sustainable synthetic materials. The bag, which was named after the “Falabella”, a miniature bred horse from Argentina, is the first vegan “It bag”.
Celebrating the Designs of Stella McCartney
Fashion, it has been proclaimed, can be used to make a statement. Each season fashion savvy women covet the “It bag”, a hand bag, usually from a high-end designer label, that has somehow been dubbed as the object that encapsulates “the moment”. The “It bag” is an accessory that can be worn with a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and even a pair of rubber flip flops, yet still maintain one’s status as a fashionable woman. It’s hard to distill the phenomenon to a formula — it’s simply accepted as axiomatic.
Within the long history of fashion, animals have been front and center. Royalty in almost every nation made fur and skins a symbol of status. Mink, sable, leopards, lions – the more exotic and beautiful, the more they were coveted. The English royals would line their robes with the fur of ermine — tiny creatures related to the weasel family with snowy white fur and a black-tipped tail. You could count the number of ermine that were skinned for the garment by the number of black spots dotting the white fur.
Today, we find the remnants of animals all around us. Leather is so prevalent we’ve almost stopped noticing it. It lines our cars, the seats in our offices, the souls on our feet, and almost always the hand bag we are carrying. It’s not just leather and fur, but there are exotic skins too – from crocodiles, lizards, sharks and even stingray. The “It bag” is often some combination of an exotic skin and heavy hardware.
Designer, Stella McCartney and co-founder of “Meat Free Monday”, a worldwide movement to encourage people to spend one day eating a meat free meal, is herself a vegetarian and an animal cruelty-free high-end fashion designer. She launched the Meat Free Monday Campaign in 2009 with her father Sir Paul McCartney, MBE and her sister Mary McCartney after the United Nations issued a report stating that the livestock industry was responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire global transport sector.
“I was brought up as a vegetarian on an organic farm in the ‘countryside’ way, so it kind of came very naturally to me. However, the decision not to use leather or fur is not just because I don’t eat animals or that I think that millions of animals each year shouldn’t be killed for the sake of fashion. It’s because I also believe in the connection between fur and leather and the environment. There’s a huge connection.”
Throughout her design career McCartney has stayed committed to sustainable design. Even when she was the designer and fashion director for the long standing French fashion house, Chloe, her contract stated she would not be using animal skins or furs in their fashion line. When she launched her own line in 2001 she faced again the challenge of creating shoes, handbags, belts, wallets, and coats without the use of animal skins and furs and never strayed. With her “Falabella bag” she became the first designer to create an “It bag” without the use of any animal products. Now that’s a statement.