Vegan, Head to Toe

Back in 1995, when mentioning the word "vegan" in restaurants only got her blank stares from waiters and cashiers, Shari Kalina had an even harder time keeping vegan when it came to her clothing.

"Leather was a big problem back then," said Kalina, now 33. "It was frustrating to have to constantly check on jackets and bags for leather parts. Often I'd find something that was mostly non-leather, but they'd have some little bit of leather in the trim."

Since she couldn't wear the leather shoes and jackets she found in her local stores, she decided to start her own store.

While vegan foods have crept into the mainstream over the intervening years, vegan leather is still an oddity. But a growing number of non-leather stores want to change that. They see offering non-leather alternatives as key to bringing more people over to the vegan way of life, as a way to send the message that you can be vegan without giving up style and sophistication.

"I wanted to make vegan living easier and more convenient," said Kalina, founder of Pangea Vegan Products in Rockville, Maryland. "More people would live this way if they knew how to go about it. You still find people today who think that if you're vegan it means you have to eat grass and go barefoot. We want to show that you can live a compassionate lifestyle without giving stuff up."

Pangea, the country's first one-stop vegan supplies store, carries groceries, body care products, and non-leather versions of everything normally made of leather – jackets, wallets, gloves, brief cases, cell phone covers, punk wrist bands, even guitar straps.

People choose to go vegan for a variety of reasons – health, environmental concerns, meat workers' rights - but for most at the heart of the philosophy is a desire to the minimize pain and suffering of animals by cutting all animal products out of their lives. Besides refusing meat, they don't eat eggs or dairy, and don't put honey on their toast. Veganism doesn't just end with the food you eat; it can also apply to the clothes you wear.

"I prefer non-leather because I don't want a dead animal on my feet," said "Rain," a 23-year-old vegan woman from Kansas City. "I don't want to touch animal skins when I put on my shoes. I don't want to know that animals suffered and died so that I could wear them on my feet."

Like Kalina, many vegan entrepreneurs went into business because they couldn't find the goods they needed to live a vegan lifestyle in mainstream stores. Erica Kubersky, co-founder of MooShoes in New York, first became vegetarian when she was eight years old, and converted to veganism several years later. Back then, she remembers, there weren't many choices for a conscientious vegan.

"At first, it seemed simple," said Kubersky. "Then someone in my family tried to challenge me by saying my shoes were made of leather. I drove my parents crazy trying to find non-leather shoes."

She searched out Converse shoes and anything made of canvas, and sometimes found shoddy non-leather shoes in discount stores like Payless. These were often made of non-breathable PVC and vinyl that would wear out quickly, crack easily, and make feet sweat.

Finding vegan shoes in New York was a struggle, but, on a visit to England in the '90s, she found that they were fairly common in Europe, using synthetic microfibers that are longer lasting and allow air to circulate. In the past, said Kubersky, vegans had to import shoes from England, where veganism was more widespread and shoe companies were more responsive to the vegan market. Stores like Ethical Wares in London and The Natural Shoe Company in Brighton inspired Kubersky and her sister Sarah to go into business for themselves.

"I was surprised and happy to see they had vegan shoe stores there, but I didn't see why New York didn't have something similar," she said.