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Cows are smart animals who develop friendships over time and mourn when they’re separated from their loved ones, so why tf has fashion brand TELFAR—known for its Bushwick Birkin bag and many other stylish bags made of vegan leather—launched a bag made of dead cows’ skin? 🐮 😨
In the leather industry, animals are forced to endure all the horrors of factory farming, including castration, branding, dehorning, and tail docking—usually without any painkillers. After a lifetime of intensive confinement, they’re typically sent to slaughterhouses, where their throats are slit and some are even skinned and dismembered while they’re still conscious. 😰 Often, this violence is perpetrated in full view of other terrified animals.
This destructive industry is also hella harmful to the environment. Companies use toxic chemicals to prevent leather from rotting, which causes massive damage to the planet. According to the Higg Materials Sustainability Index, cowskin leather contributes more to climate change, water pollution, water depletion, and greenhouse gas emissions than any synthetic or plant-based vegan leather. 😶
There are tons of animal-friendly materials companies can use to create stunning fashion, including vegan leathers made from apples, mushrooms, mangoes, tree bark, and other natural sources. But as long as companies keep propping up the leather industry, cows and other animals will keep being abused, slaughtered, and skinned for profit. 💰
TELFAR describes its leather bag (which is way more expensive than its vegan leather bags, btw) as being made of “full-grain pebble leather—left unlined (since it has nothing to hide),” but the bag is hiding something: the extreme suffering cows endured to make it. Please urge TELFAR to regain its aura by going back to using only vegan leather!