Entering a designer boutique now you may not be able to distinguish between the leather and non-leather bags. The revolution in luxury vegan handbags has been quite impressive. A once small market of hemp satchels and canvas totes has grown into a product that can compete with traditional leather goods in every important aspect.
The workmanship goes much beyond mere discovery of leather substitutes. Stitching methods have been forced to change. These new materials do not always work with traditional leather tools. Certain vegan leathers need alternative needle types, thread tensions and cutting techniques. These techniques have been mastered over years by skilled artisans.
The issue of hardware is a different story altogether. Most high end vegan handbags now have recycled metals or new types of coatings that do not use traditional chrome plating techniques. The zippers, clasps, and buckles must also be ethical. This implies that sourcing is complicated, but the outcomes are self-explanatory.
The Human Touch in Factory in the Digital Age
The art of bag-making is a blend of old world artisanship and new technology. Laser cutting makes it possible to achieve the accuracy that is not achievable with hand-cutting, especially when dealing with delicate materials, such as mushroom leather. The stitching is computer controlled and ensures consistency between production runs. But the final touches such as edge painting, hand-buffing and final quality checks are all very human things.
Pattern making has assumed the art in its own right. The designers need to know the behavior of these new materials when stressed, how they age and how they react to various climates. A pineapple leather bag may swell in the presence of humidity unlike conventional leather. These factors influence all design choices.
The range of colours offered in vegan materials has gone sky high. Natural colour of hide restricted traditional leather dyeing. The new materials are able to be produced in any shade at all. Bright burgundies, electric blues and metallic leathers that would have been unattainable with animal leather have become the norm.
Behind the Seams Artisan Stories
Here is Sofia, a Milan-based pattern maker who has been using vegan materials instead of leather during the last three years. She refers to the learning curve as, “it is like learning to sew all over again.” Every material has a personality. An example of such is cork leather, which has a memory, i.e. fold it in the wrong direction and it will remember the crease. Mushroom leather is a surprisingly forgiving material that needs different pressing methods.
The artisans that have been attracted to the luxury vegan handbags market are not expected. Automotive upholsterers who have retired have precision skills. Sailmakers are also a source of information on how to work with synthetic materials in tension. The cross-breeding of the skills generates innovation that the traditional leather products could not match.
The quality control has also changed. Conventional leather testing sought grain markings, scarring and thickness differences. Vegan materials involve other skills. The inspectors look at whether the coating has been applied consistently, whether the edges have been properly heat-sealed and whether there is any integrity in the material that may not be immediately apparent to the layman.
Economics of Ethical Production
Interesting story is told by production costs. At first, vegan materials were not cheaper than leather. Many materials have gone through a turnaround. Mushroom leather is now competitive to produce and more so with the environmental costs that are not factored in the prices of traditional leather.
The small-batch manufacturing is now a standard practice of most luxury vegan handbags. It is not only a question of exclusivity but quality control and management of materials. New vegan materials tend to have a shorter pre-processing shelf life and thus need to be inventoried more carefully than the traditional leather.
The supply chain of luxury vegan handbags is totally different. We have laboratories and streams of agricultural wastes instead of tanneries and cattle farms. The agreement with the pineapple farms in Costa Rica, apple processing plants in Italy and mushroom growing centres in the Netherlands, form a global network that is more complex and also more transparent than the traditional sourcing of leather.
Innovations that are already under development in the future
Man-made materials are taking it to another level. Bio-fabricated leather, which is cultivated in a controlled environment without a plant basis, has never been as consistent. Other firms are working on materials that will self-heal small scratches or even change colour according to temperature.
The 3D printing technology is emerging to have an impact on the construction of bags. Internal structures that could not be sewed can now be printed directly into the frame of the bag. This creates new design opportunities that could not be realised in conventional building practices.
The art of creating the current luxury vegan handbags is an interesting combination of ancient art and contemporary design. Every bag is a story of materials science, artisan adaptation and design evolution. The result is a product that is not only able to replace leather, but in most ways, it can be better, and it opens up new opportunities that animal products never did.
