We register that in vegan marketing, a mystical crisis is fashionable. After Apple, which in order to justify its (not too successful) leather-free turn staged the endorsement of Mother Nature, it was Stella McCartney who most recently appealed to the transcendent forces of planet earth. At the Paris presentation of the autumn-winter 25 collection, testimonials such as Olivia Colman and Helen Mirren read a message for Mother Earth from “sustainable screens made from recycled and sustainable materials” (imagine how circular led screens are). But the mystical crisis should not distract from the fundamental problem with Stella McCartney’s public displays: she continues to peddle fake news on tannery.
Yet another fabrication
Stella McCartney (pictured, archives) says of herself that she is a veg fashion lobbyist (in this sense, we recognise that she is a PR person, but we call her commercially “unsuccessful”). Too bad she abuses her pulpit to spread falsehoods. “In 2006, I read the United Nations report compiled by the FAO, Livestock’s Long Shadow”, she tells How to Spend It by Il Sole 24 Ore. “I discovered the impact that intensive livestock farms have on the environment: over a billion animals are killed every year to provide leather for the tanning industry”.
This is vegans’ favourite fake news. They want us to believe that tanning is co-responsible/complicit with animal husbandry: the leather industry, they say, shares the moral burden of animal husbandry or, at least, its environmental impact. It is not like that: tanning takes a by-product of the food industry, otherwise destined to be treated as waste, and transforms it into a noble material. It is a circular and upcycling activity, even without invoking the spirits of Nature.
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