Personal statement: Sustainability

“Yes, it has to be animal leather. YET.”

As always, the reasons for such an answer are varied. So, let's go!

Sustainability always has many facets for a company. Sustainable purchasing, sustainable production, sustainable disposal, recycling, sustainable business, and so on. What I see many companies often forget, however, is to inform and educate their customers transparently so that they can form their own opinions and, in the best case, decide to act sustainably.

In my opinion, the biggest lever when it comes to sustainability is not production (which is of course also important – I’ll come to that later), but rather demand – in other words, the purchasing behavior of customers.

If you've landed on the BAGS & PIECES website, you've probably already realized something before many other consumers around the world: Homemade is cool!

But only if it doesn't necessarily look like it's homemade, but still like a fashion piece that you wear for a long time and with great appreciation . And it's precisely here, namely the issue of longevity and appreciation, that each individual can use to make a big difference when it comes to sustainability. That's why our primary goal at BAGS & PIECES is to create a product that is particularly long-lasting and worn with so much appreciation that it is cherished and cared for and doesn't disappear into the last corner of your closet.

Hand on heart: Would you ever squeeze your beloved homemade crossbody into a drawer with five other bags, let it gather dust in the last corner of your closet, or use it three times and then put it away in the attic and leave it to its fate? Well, personally, I would NEVER. And I have a few crossbodies!

However, there are two things that prevent you from treating your favorite homemade handbag in this way:

For my personal perception, I can confidently tick this box off. #proudofmyself

And there is no discussion and no compromise here, after all, we all want to enjoy our bags.

How practical that you probably all have some yarn and edge paint left in your DIY box, so that you can make improvements in a few years' time if necessary. And I've also explained many times that the saddle stitch is probably the strongest seam you can use on your bag. So here too: CHECK!

But let's talk about point two: durable material. Finally, I want to answer my initial question: "Does it have to be animal leather?"

My experience over the last few years of countless phone calls with suppliers, hours-long car journeys through Italy to various tanneries and trade fairs and what feels like 9084309824 tests have shown that the alternative products are not yet at the level of quality that they can compete with real leather. Reading this is certainly not great news, but it is my perception.

Leather is: a natural product, tough but can still be soft, breathable, heat-resistant, lightfast, resistant to wear and tear and rub-resistant. In addition, the feel, i.e. the grip, is not comparable to the substitute products currently available on the market.

All of these properties vary, of course, depending on how the leather is produced, the tanning process and the finishing. I have explained why we chose chrome tanning in the next section.

In summary:

Real leather has such good properties that they are difficult to imitate with substitute products. Apple leather, pineapple leather, mushroom leather, cactus leather, grape leather, eucalyptus leather, cork - there are many alternatives, but in the end none is really leather.

The materials I tested usually fail due to a combination of two aspects: stiffness and abrasion resistance. If the materials are abrasion-resistant, they are often so hard that you can't work with them. Or they are beautifully soft, but by no means stable and durable. There are many mistakes that can be made when choosing the right genuine leather for your project. It gets even more complicated with alternatives that are currently simply not an alternative.

By the way: I'm deliberately not even mentioning artificial leather in detail here, because in my opinion it can't even be described as an alternative to leather. Neither in terms of durability, and even less in terms of sustainability.

For those who are not familiar with the problem, here is a brief explanation: Artificial leather is traditionally made of polyurethane, which is made from petroleum and whose production consumes enormous amounts of energy and water (more than the production of real leather). Incidentally, petroleum is a fossil, non-renewable raw material. That is why, for me, artificial leather is nothing more and nothing less than what you would normally call products made from polyurethane: namely plastic.

So, to finally come back to the answer to my original question: Yes, it has to be real animal leather. For now.

That doesn't mean that it will always be like this, there is currently a lot of innovation in this area and that's a good thing! But for me, real leather is currently the only alternative when it comes to offering a long-lasting and high-quality accessory that will last you a lifetime.

My almost namesake Vivienne Westwood summed it up back in 2017: Buy less, choose well, make it last.

So with that in mind, all the best to you,
Vivian

PS: Here comes a little disclaimer

I am neither an industry expert nor a chemist, nor do I know every possible substitute product on the market. Let alone have I tested them ALL. And of course there are exceptions to the rule. But when a promising exception does come along, it is either associated with minimum quantities of what feels like 2,000 crossbodies per color, or with a color selection of three different colors (booooo), or with prices that very few customers would actually pay in the end.

I'm really excited to see how the alternatives develop and I'm curious to see what innovations we can expect in this area. At some point there will definitely be alternatives that can keep up with real leather - if that's the case, I'm open to new tests and will be happy to keep you updated on social media. But until then, we'll stick with the material that's even better to stroke than fabric: leather.