Just to Clarify… July 13, 2009

When I wrote a certain previous entry, I assumed that, since herbivores tend to have higher IQs and are generally accustomed to doing a certain amount of detective work, it would be easy to deduce which shoe manufacturer’s goods were in question.

Apparently, a few people either didn’t pick up on the clues or didn’t understand that I don’t want to harm the manufacturer or get the sales rep in trouble. Let me ask one question: do you people also get mad at Perez Hilton for posting blind items?

It is not the manufacturer’s fault that some people are passing off some of their wares as vegan when they are not. (They don’t seem to understand why it is so important for a charitable company to produce enough vegan shoes to meet the demand in the first place, but I’m hoping I can help encourage them to change that.)  Whichever retailers are engaging in this scheme have the option of telling the company, “No thanks, we’ll just wait to order until you have enough vegan styles to fill the minimum”, but apparently I’m the first one to dig in her heels and actually do that.

I cannot pass along information I do not have. The rep didn’t say WHO was accepting nonvegan shoes. All she said was that she’d had other “vegan” stores do so (but if I figure out who is doing it, I won’t be shy about naming them). I have no intention of pumping her for names, since most companies expect their employees to keep client information confidential and…

I don’t want the sales rep to get into trouble, especially in this economy. Disclosing private information can get someone fired, and this is a horrible time to be an out-of-work or underemployed sales rep. She may not understand why I’m so strict about only ordering vegan items, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to lose her job, particularly at a time like this.

I DO want the veg*n community to support the manufacturer when it is possible to do so. Sure, they definitely aren’t making enough vegan shoes, but if the demand is consistent enough and veg*n consumers are vocal enough, that may change. This company, as I have said, may not be 100% vegan, but they do more charity work than any other shoe company I can think of. If we stop supporting the company entirely just because some desperate retailers are fudging the facts, it takes money out of their pockets…money they need to keep making a difference. All I wanted was to let people know that some retailers are overlooking the truth, and to proceed with caution until that changes.

Some people are idiots who don’t read things carefully. If I posted the company’s name, at least one halfwit would skim the entry, falsely conclude that the manufacturer was entirely to blame, and proceed to damage their reputation. I really, really don’t want that to happen. Blind-item-style entries in any media outlet are self-authorizing – if you can figure them out, you are smart enough to be entrusted with the information.

Here are the clues, again, for your convenience:

• Company is relatively new
• Brand is very, very trendy
• Brand is big on ethics…fair labor, etc.
• Canvas is used extensively…leather is mostly used in soles, not uppers
• It’s not Macbeth. (Macbeth now puts a little green “v” on the backs of their vegan styles for easy identification.)
• Did I mention they do a TON of charity work?

Here is my recommendation: If you want to support this company, I strongly suggest you order directly from their website, at least for now. They clearly label the vegan styles as such, and since they don’t (yet) understand how strong the demand for vegan shoes is becoming, they have little motivation to mislabel their own products.  Also, you can contact them through their website and ask them why they aren’t making more vegan styles (try as I might, I can’t do everything by myself).

For the record…no one ever does my detective work for me. I have to do it ALL myself. I have enough to do as it is (the last time I came within 10 feet of a doctor she begged me to take a vacation, so you can imagine), but I don’t waste time getting mad about it. I buckle down and do it -  and I dutifully pass along the information IF I can find a way to do so without causing more harm than good (which is kind of the whole point of going vegan in the first place).

Good luck.

When Trends Cause Hypocrisy July 9, 2009

Whenever a non-vegan shoe company starts making vegan shoes, I can’t help cheering.

At the same time, part of me twitches nervously.

When non-vegan shoe companies decide to introduce vegan styles, things don’t always go smoothly. There are some common hiccups:

• Using the wrong kind of glue. I can think of two different manufacturers who initially used thin water-based glues – not surprisingly, a lot of shoes fell apart until the glue was changed. (Among vegan adhesives, rubber-based or synthetic glues are far more durable.) It is largely for this reason that, when a potential new supplier begins making vegan shoes, I now prefer to wait for at least a season to make sure they’ve had a chance to correct any glue problems that arise before considering an order.
• Using the wrong materials. I feel physically sick whenever I see a vegan shoe made with cheap, crappy materials and priced much higher than it is actually worth. (I can think of one grossly overpriced, all-vegan label that did this for at least one season, incidentally…)
• Not labeling vegan shoes explicitly. One company deliberately mislabeled fake-leather shoes as real leather – and didn’t understand why I sent them back. (They refused my request for correct labels…and don’t seem to fully understand why I have declined to work with them ever since.)
• And my biggest pet peeve: not understanding what the word “vegan” means!

Not too long ago, a very trendy ‘ethical’ shoe company came onto the market and was widely embraced for their charity work.

I will not name this company, since I have to admire all the good they’ve done; and in spite of everything, I’m still trying to find a way to work with them. But, the vegan world needs to know about this.

Because the company is socially conscious, more than a few well-meaning vegetarians and vegans naïvely assumed their canvas-upper shoes were animal-free, and snatched them up without bothering to read the labels carefully.

In actuality, it took a few years for the company to begin producing vegan shoes. The majority of their styles, regardless of the upper material, have animal skins in the soles. You read that right, ladies and gentlemen – those trendy shoes you bought two years ago and thought were vegan probably aren’t.

Recently, I have been attempting to place an order with the company. When I initially spoke with the sales rep, I explained that I run a vegan store and would therefore only be interested in vegan styles. At the time, I had no way of knowing this could prove problematic.

One of the women’s vegan styles I ordered was already sold out. No big deal, I told the rep – just tell me which vegan women’s styles are still available and I’ll order one of those. She told me they were ALL sold out, save for the other colorway I’d ordered.

And the kicker? She told me that if I didn’t order a total of four different styles they would refuse to process the order, even though the other vegan styles were all sold out, thus rendering such a thing logistically impossible for a strictly vegan store.

I told her I’d just wait another three months for the fall collection – no big deal. She then tried to convince me to order a nonvegan style to complete the order.

But wait…it gets worse. MUCH worse.

She went on to admit that several “vegan” stores had been ordering shoes they knew were not vegan because it was the only way they could get the brand at all.

She explained that the company had more orders for vegan styles than it could possibly fill, which is NOT an excuse for a business which misrepresents itself as vegan to buy and sell goods they know are not.

My business partner and I asked her why the company didn’t just make more vegan shoes than nonvegan ones (as one supplier we work with has done). Hell, why not make the entire line vegan, since no one objected to the fabric uppers? She stammered a pathetic excuse about the company being “really ethical”.

While they are certainly on stronger ethical footing than a large number of manufacturers, the fact of the matter is, their nonvegan styles still incorporate animal skins, and are therefore considered unethical by approximately 80 percent of my clientele (the other 20 percent are omnivores who just think we have really cute stuff).

I would NEVER put nonvegan wares on my shelves, no matter what the company’s claims are or how much money I could make from such a venture in this lousy economy. Yet, because the vegan styles are so hard to purchase, some desperate retailers are willing to overlook their so-called ethics and deceitfully sell nonvegan stock.

If you plan to purchase a vegan style produced by this manufacturer, my recommendation is this: contact the manufacturer directly and ask if the style you like is actually vegan. If they tell you it is not, don’t let a desperate retailer trick you into buying shoes that are not vegan.

Allowing nonvegan goods to pass as such dilutes the meaning of the word, and subtly tells manufacturers that yes, they can in fact sell animal skins to people who claim to shun them. Not only is this an appalling and slimy practice (which, I might add, blatantly disrespects religious sects that frown upon wearing animals), it allows the leather industry – which is tied tightly to the beef and dairy industries – to profit from the very same people who don’t want to give them their hard-earned money in the first place.

I can’t force other retailers to walk the walk, but my readers can rest assured that I will not give up my morals just to cash in on a trend.

I’m still going to try to work with the company for now, but I will only place an order if they can send me an all-vegan order.

In the meantime, shop carefully, people.

All Creatures Exploited and Scaly June 16, 2009

Reuters reports (via Perez Hilton and Girlie Girl Army) that Hermés breeds their own crocodiles for bags.

I have to wonder, why is this so shocking? Hermés has owned its own alligator farm in Florida for years for the same reason, so why is it surprising that they are now breeding crocodiles in Australia? I realize not everyone pays attention to this stuff, but it’s not exactly a big secret.

Crocodiles aren’t particularly gentle creatures, and in the wild you’d be hard-pressed to find a fully grown crocodile without a few scars caused by other crocodiles (or, in some cases, reckless humans). Hermés are notorious perfectionists, and cut around scars or other flaws when cutting skins to make bags – if a skin is too scarred, it’s not bloody likely to make the grade. To Hermés, it makes sense to breed alligators and therefore control their environment. Which doesn’t make it any less revolting, of course.

So long as I’m on the subject of Hermés…

About a year ago an interviewer asked me if I thought vegan fashion should be accessible and affordable to all, or if it should retain some exclusivity. My response was that vegan fashion should have a mix of both accessibility and exclusivity, since such a balance would give vegan fashionistas something to aspire to while still giving them something to actually wear.

Hermés is an excellent example of a single company maintaining such a balance. Anyone can walk into an Hermés store and buy a scarf or a bracelet, but good luck buying a Birkin or Kelly bag…and the miles-long waiting lists for those bags keep some clients coming back again and again for a “fix” – such as yet another scarf. (Trust me on this; I occasionally talk to non-vegan fashion fiends as part of my never-ending sponge-method research.) The ubiquitous scarf gives Hermés clients a piece of the brand, but they still aspire to have that Birkin on one arm, and buy it if and when they get the chance, in spite of the fact that they cost thousands of dollars. In fact, Hermés’ sales went UP after 9/11, a time when most retailers were suffering, because that brand exclusivity made more and more people want to buy “one nice thing.”

Aspiring vegan fashion designers would do well to make a note of this. By all means, get your stuff out there so potential clients can easily buy it, but consider making a second line that isn’t so easy to come by. People always want what they can’t have.

Real Vegans Boycott Payless: Open Letter to _______ Magazine* April 21, 2009

Dear _______:

Way back on December 30, I contacted you to express my disappointment about your decision to not only include Payless in a list of vegan-friendly apparel retailers, but to place the company at the top of the list as well. You have yet to acknowledge my letter, let alone respond.

Payless is NOT an appropriate choice for anyone with ethical or environmental concerns (moreover, in the future it won’t be an option for anyone who shuns leather either). They commit design theft left and right. They are a longtime user of sweatshops. The crappy vinyl they use for shoe uppers is highly unlikely to biodegrade at all (quality faux leathers can be 30-100% biodegradable). Their goods require frequent replacement due to their low quality, which generates much more waste (and uses more energy) than buying good-quality faux-leather shoes, which can last for years with proper care.

Earlier in the very same issue, you ran an article about labor practices in the food industry [title deleted].  While I applaud you for drawing attention to the importance of fair-trade agriculture, I must protest the inherent hypocrisy in supporting Payless. You don’t approve of the cocoa industry exploiting African children, yet you won’t extend the same compassion to factory workers, the majority of them teenage girls, in Southeast Asia (many of whom are beaten or groped by supervisors, denied restroom breaks, housed in overcrowded firetrap dorms, fined for everything under the sun, fed amphetamines to stay awake for forced overtime shifts, and paid so little they are lucky if they can afford two meager meals per day).

Being vegan is about reducing suffering. Sweatshop labor is inherently not vegan. Your list should have been composed entirely of ethical companies. I myself have offered to cover the fashion beat for you in the past, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but I could have come up with a far better list of leather-free shoe companies. If a mere shopkeeper (with a fashion background and a few published articles under her belt) isn’t good enough to write for _______, fine, but at least assign fashion-related articles to writers who are actually knowledgeable about truly vegan fashion.

Incidentally, cheap shoes do not offer sufficient support or air circulation. Cheap shoes are the high-fructose corn syrup of the footwear trade – they seem like a good idea to uninformed consumers at first, but only later do they realize their unhealthy mistake.

If you are going to present yourselves as an ethical veg*n publication, you must be 100 percent consistent! Mistakes like this are precisely the sort of thing that causes omnivores to write off herbivores as animal lovers who hate people. While I will openly admit to cracking the occasional joke about people being no damn good, I would never knowingly support such a cruel and immoral industry. Furthermore, I certainly don’t want to be lumped in with people who call themselves veg*n but don’t give a damn whose rights they spit upon in the pursuit of a well-stocked closet.

I’ve spent the past three years trying to convince certain apathetic self-proclaimed veg*ns why they should care about sweatshop labor, and in one fell swoop you unraveled my work by telling my target market Payless was “okay” (which it quite clearly is not). I am not going to ask you for compensation or anything like that (I’m the Vegan Shoe Lady, you know). I just want you to tell your readers you made a mistake.

Sincerely,

The Vegan Shoe Lady

P.S. Dear Readers – here’s the original letter:

Dear Editor,

Words cannot describe how shocked I was to see Payless topping the list in your [title deleted] sidebar from the January/February 2009 issue. Payless may offer some wares that contain no leather, but they are not an appropriate choice for anyone with environmental, ethical, or animal-rights concerns.

Payless shoes are extremely cheap because they are made with extremely cheap materials and are assembled as cheaply as possible. The company is well-known for using sweatshop labor. It’s true that they pulled out of one abusive factory several years ago (following an investigation by Chinese labor officials), but it is highly unlikely that Payless will ever really pay its factory workers a living wage. Having a basic understanding of apparel manufacturing, I can tell you that it is, in fact, fiscally impossible to fairly compensate workers and still profitably produce a shoe that will retail for $20. Being vegan is supposed to be about reducing, and hopefully eliminating, suffering. Given that you ran an article addressing labor issues in the food industry [title deleted] earlier in this very issue, I find the mention of Payless incredibly inappropriate.

Because Payless’ shoes are haphazardly assembled from cheap materials, their level of quality is hardly ideal, and they require much more frequent replacement than a higher-quality vegan shoe. The cheap plastics they use aren’t going to biodegrade anytime soon, and when cheap shoes wear out, they take up landfill space. Frequently-replaced shoes take up a LOT more landfill space than a well-made pair that will last for years.

Incidentally, “cheap” shoes aren’t always so good for your wallet. (Not too long ago, in my blog, I compared and contrasted two people; one wearing only cheap shoes, one wearing only good ones. Because cheap shoes wear out so quickly, the person who wore only cheap shoes wound up paying more than twice as much over a 10-year period.) Also, cheap vinyl shoes lack proper structure and do not breathe. I personally would prefer that the veg*n community NOT be known for stress fractures and sweaty, malodorous feet.

Please, _______, help your readers to do the right thing. Why not encourage them to support ethical companies, preferably run by people who truly understand what “vegan” means?

Sincerely,

The Vegan Shoe Lady

P.P.S. I wish Laura Little had photographed me for the store’s early press coverage.

*Name (and article titles) omitted, but it’s not hard to figure out.

I Told You So March 19, 2009

A couple of years ago, I read in a footwear trade publication that a certain cheap shoe chain (the name starts with a P and rhymes with “hayless”) would be phasing out vinyl shoes in favor of (eeew! ick! not vegan!) leather uppers.

Of course, I mentioned this in an online forum I frequented at the time, due to the relatively high concentration of vegan shoe fiends.

The one member who acknowledged my posting replied “I refuse to believe that!” She’d apparently just been to her local branch of the chain and found lots of shiny PVC on every shelf.

The fashion world does NOT work as quickly as everyone thinks it does. One well-known vegan restaurant has, on at least one occasion, decided what to create for dessert on the spur of the moment, that morning. Designing and manufacturing shoes, on the other hand, is a process that takes MONTHS, and when big companies are planning a significant change, they often plan them over an even longer period of time, if possible. Of course it wasn’t going to be an overnight change!

Earlier today, a new customer told me she’d recently stopped shopping at that chain – not because she finally realized she deserved better (everyone deserves better), but because every pair of shoes she saw there that she liked had leather uppers. Vinyl shoes are disappearing from the chain’s shelves.

Vindication is mine!

P.S. Read the archives of this blog to find out why cheap shoes actually cost you more than twice as much as good shoes in the long run. (That is NOT an exaggeration. I did the cost comparison myself.) Even in a bad economy, it’s better to invest in one good pair than four super-cheap, sloppily made pairs.

The Shoe Lady Hates Phonies March 16, 2009

In yesterday’s Social Q’s column, Philip Galanes took a reader to task for buying a counterfeit designer watch and then pondering whether to own up to its illegal origins when complimented on it.

While I would have greatly preferred that Galanes mention the ugliest aspects of the fake-fashion trade (specifically, the organized-crime syndicates that finance most knockoff operations and the horrid sweatshops producing them), I do have to give him points for making the reader at least somewhat aware of the consequences of his incredibly stupid faux pas:

And try not to feel too guilty when you walk by your local elementary school or hospital. Because I can assure you, the counterfeiters didn’t pay a penny in taxes to support them.

As previously mentioned in several entries, I despise knockoffs. They represent the ugliest side of labelmania, and bring out the apathetic hedonist in otherwise sane people. No true vegan would ever be caught dead buying a knockoff; their sale funds exactly the sorts of things that compassionate, socially conscious people find absolutely despicable.

In other news, another kind of fake caught the eye of authorities in Vermont. Specifically, a young hunter illegally shot at least one immature buck and several does – then bolted a 10-point rack onto a doe’s head. Draw your own conclusions about the hunter’s IQ and/or need to overcompensate for a “personal shortcoming.”

Blind Item: Shoe Shame December 31, 2008

What animal-friendly lifestyle magazine, which sells a fair amount of ad space to veg*n retailers (including yours truly), saw fit to put Payless at the top of their list of veg*n-friendly shoe companies in a sidebar to a larger article?

Words cannot describe how disappointed I am. These people know better. What’s worse, they have people who know a lot about veg*n apparel (myself included) at their disposal. The sidebar should have featured *ethical* companies.

Oh, and do I really have to remind anyone why cheap shoes are still a bad idea?

Designer Knockoffs are Not Vegan September 16, 2008

…no matter how fake the leather/fur/wool/silk might be.

If anyone knows what it’s like to have haute-couture taste on a Salvation Army budget, it’s me. And I wouldn’t be caught dead with a vinyl Balenciaga copy from Santee Alley on my arm (even if the “It Bag” phenomenon weren’t dead, which it pretty much is).

This is not about label mania, snobbery, or greed. This is about human rights and standards of decent behavior.

What do human rights have to do with knockoffs? Read and learn.

In the old days, most people who knocked off designer goods were relatively ordinary, if somewhat unscrupulous, people just looking to capitalize on someone else’s creative work. This only harmed struggling designers with poor cash flow and anyone tricked into buying a fake who was subsequently mocked for it. Some American department stores were allowed to reproduce European designers’ goods and sell them, but they were charged fees for the privilege.

In recent years, most knockoff goods have been made in shady conditions (read: sweatshops), often by child workers. In Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Dana Thomas describes an account of Thai children whose legs were broken to keep them from going outside to play while they were supposed to be making fake handbags.

The knockoff trade is mainly run by organized crime syndicates (probably because the cops are more likely to bust someone for money laundering than for copying the Vuitton logo) and even terrorist groups. Thomas also mentions al-Qaeda and Hezbollah’s ostensible forays into South American sales of knockoff t-shirts to fund, among other awful things, the 9/11 attacks.

These groups are, of course, also actively involved in the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and humans, to say nothing of terrorism and gang links. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Being vegan is about reducing suffering. When you buy fakes, you are giving your money to people who are actively making the world worse. Don’t believe it? Talk to someone who has worked in a sweatshop for 72 hours straight, having been fed amphetamines to stay awake and meet the production quota. Talk to someone who lost a friend or relative on 9/11. Talk to someone who has struggled with drug addiction for years or seen their once-respectable neighborhood overrun by a large street gang.

Buying knockoff goods cannot legitimately be called a victimless crime. Please don’t support those despicable criminals.