Best, I'd advise, to give up all animal products obtained by cruel methods. There are some fine companies nowadays offering leather substitutes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It may sound crazy, but maybe there's an economic way of producing a leather-like product in the laboratory.
Pretending that the fashion industry isn't in part based on leather would be quite stupid of me, but at the same time, there is another way of doing things - even outside of leather. I don't use PVC either, for example, because it is harmful.
I'm totally against animal cruelty. I don't have clothes, shoes or bags made from any animal products.
Ninety percent of the people who come to my stores have no idea I don't work with leather.
I've had people say to me, 'You'll never sell handbags. You don't work with leather, and leather is luxury.' To me, it's the complete opposite: leather is everywhere - it's so cheap a material; it's so mass produced. Over 50 million animals a year are killed just for fashion. For me, it doesn't have a luxury element to it.
We should eat less meat - all of us - and we should use less leather. I mean, that's reality.
There is no kind way to rip the skin off animals' backs. Anyone who wears any fur shares the blame for the torture and gruesome deaths of millions of animals each year.
We live in such a consumer-based world. Everything we do, someone else has provided for us, so there is something really empowering about knowing that once I have found the right pieces of wood, I can start a fire and keep myself warm and skin an animal to eat and make its skin into leather.
Working in this industry, I have been exposed to so many products and now realize more than ever how cruel and unnecessary animal testing is.
There is no moral distinction between fur and other materials made from animals, such as leather, which also is the result of the suffering and death of sentient beings.