The intention of transforming a world lies behind a simple change of an adjective. Now, in fact, synthetic materials that copy leather have stopped using their “fake leather” denomination. In other words, now they have stopped, from a nominal point of view at least, running after leather value. Let us speak frankly: all of a sudden, they somehow no longer feel in the need to grab the leather label to reassure customers: “We are not leather, but we are pretty much it”. While relying on the veg adjective, substitute materials themselves play tricky, (supposedly) outdoing leather. In one fell swoop, synthetic materials outflank leather (they are not animal products, are they? They are c-r-u-e-l-t-y f-r-e-e!), therefore liberating themselves from inconvenient abbreviations, such as PU and PVC. Why are they inconvenient? Because they hint at their petrochemical origin. Not that green, is it?
What Google says about
The Sydney Morning Herald has recently carried out a valuable research on the topic. The author of the survey considers 2016 to be the key year for the Aussie market. At that time, in fact, on Google Trends, which records all weekly searches carried out in Perth and Sydney, the vegan leather term outdid the fake leather one. How about Italy? Italy is the fashion and leather-tanning country: well, we did it even before (not that good indeed). In 2005, for the very first time, the “eco-pelle” (environmentally friendly leather) term surpassed the “simil pelle” (fake leather) one. Since 2009, the “green” prefix has been by far the one people searched most on Google.
Effects
The Australian daily newspaper addressed the issue of materials durability (which is synthetic materials weak point) and reported the point of view of vegan supporters: in their opinion, the vegan label does not include only PVC and similar products, but also new bio-based fabrics. Another issue is the marketing one: according to a survey, carried out by EDITED in the US and UK markets, in the last year vegan-labelled products supply increased by 70%. Green dictionary proves effective, after all. Unfortunately.
In the picture, a screenshot taken from The Sydney Morning Herald website
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