The Vegan Lifestyle also means Focus on Clothing Choices

Have you considered your choice of clothing as a vegan? If you want to live a vegan lifestyle, then you should also consider your clothing choices. It’s not necessarily just about the food, but you can also think in relation to where the clothes come from.

Vegan clothing is based on good ethics since you distance yourself from animals and at the same time have an environmentally friendly perspective. It’s more than “just” avoiding leather, fur, wool, etc. It may also be to consider how the animal has been treated. This is a consideration that has emerged much more in our society, as you can now to a much greater extent find recycled clothes and clothes made from innovative, recyclable materials. For example, vegan leather and clothing can be made from polyurethane, synthetic fibers, bamboo, and hemp plants.

Did You Know?

• Polyurethane is a group of cellular plastic materials that can be used for everything from insulation to mattresses, furniture, toys - and clothes.
  
  
• Synthetic fiber is artificially produced fiber used in textiles.
  
  
• Bamboo is a hard fiber reminiscent of wood, which requires chemicals to be transformed into a soft fabric that can be used in clothing production.
  
  
• When you have to make clothes from hemp, it has to be processed. This can be done in two ways: Either you have to leave the stems on the ground until the fibers can be separated from the bark or you have to put them in a large vessel with chemicals. However, it’s still a fairly new and not very developed production.

Vegan clothing is unfortunately not that much promoted yet, but we are seeing a greater increase in recycling in stores than before - this is also something that’s good for the environment. If you want to look for which materials are already vegan, then you can buy cotton clothes, as cotton is 100% vegan. In addition, alternatives to leather are cork, pineapple leaf fibers, sponge leather, and recycled rubber. The Portuguese brand “Nae”, for example, makes shoes out of pineapple leaf fibers.

If you are wondering if there are any remarks that you can look for to find out that the product is vegan and not tested on animals, then the Danish Vegan Association has made one that is available in both Danish and English, and therefore you can use it globally.

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Celina, Rose & Kamilla
Københavns Professionshøjskole