Conversations about sustainability in the fashion industry are often swathed in the grandiloquence of self-adulation, with that unmistakable air of self-importance. There is not a even a murmur from ground zero, and intermittently one would find a bunch of inscrutable expressions that strut around as being self-deprecatory, often for the sake of it. Big-ticket fashion events invariably are all like that. And, a buzzword is tossed around for fancy: inclusive.
Yet, the fashion world is inclusive in only including who they like or want. Depending on which side of the ideological fence you come from, that would be either crony capitalism or crony socialism.
That's why these events, as also the countless nugatory webinars, wax eloquent about the plight of cotton farmers, but fail to invite any farmer to a panel. You know—a real farmer, one in soiled clothes, one with such blisters on his feet that he can barely walk. No, you wouldn't have seen such a pitiable man.
Honchos and activists don't like the poor, they only like poverty—something they can wallow in. Or, take apparel workers, if you insist. Apparel is manufactured in over 100 countries, probably in over 150, but you get to see representatives only from Bangladesh, that too the same labour face who is funded by Western organisations. Why? Because inclusiveness is now only about who you want to include.
All the same, let's cut to the chase, and narrow down to the subject matter of this Spotlight edition: leather. Leather is big, it is a bona fide sector in itself, and leather is the reason that the homo sapiens species has survived. Yet, leather is hardly to be seen at events, and scarcely read about in the media, both mainstream media and new media. If you see leather, it is rather as an exception and not as a rule. This argument, of course, excludes footwear/leather events, and publications that understand leather.
Dealing with the diatribe
Leather, in many ways, is afflicted by the same incessant and vituperative barrage of myths and fantasy fiction that has considerably and inexorably harmed cotton.
It is true that the leather sector historically had a problem—that of chemicals, pollution, and what not. But then, which sector hadn’t? Rather, hasn't. Cities today are bursting at their seams, choking in the tonnes of apparel waste that they generate every single day. Yet, leather is seen as a problem! If anything, it is arguably the leather sector which has cleaned up its act more than that of any of its fashion industry cousins. True, residual effects remain, but that's true of just about all other sectors.
There's a push against leather, and this push as it were comes from three quarters: animal rights activists, forest groups and—needless to add—the synthetic fibres industry.
Let's start with the animal activists. The unbridled cruelty that was rightly associated with the leather industry is a thing of the past. As an industry, leather does not advocate inhumane acts. Not because those are politically wrong, but because they are simply wrong in their own stead. Yet, every now and then, animal rights groups come up with dodgy and/or dubious videos of gore and savagery. If true, then those are outright exceptions and must be dealt with severely and without mercy. But that is not where the problem lies. The point is that these sporadic videos are without fail used as propaganda tools to paint leather in blood. Someone needs to tell these people: one swallow never makes a summer.
Most animal rights groups may have their hearts in the right place, but have their heads—bereft of ecological understanding and shorn of scientific rigour—buried somewhere else.
A case in point is that of Australia's kangaroo leather. Brands, under enormous pressure from animal rights groups in the US, have started shunning kangaroo leather. Both the groups and the brands have not just disregarded, but also haughtily scoffed at volumes of meticulously-conducted scientific research Down Under showing that the kangaroo leather industry is not just beneficial for roo conservation, but is in fact needed too. But science is not a plus point with activists, and spineless brands simply fold up to boisterous campaigners who have possibly never seen a roo in their life except in National Geographic documentaries.
It's the rule of the mob driven by maudlin sentiments and misplaced outrage. Taken with a dose of virtue signalling, it's a heady mix.
The same goes for the forest bunch who have been trying to pin all deforestation blame squarely on the leather industry. Again, no direct link has ever been established linking the leather industry to rampant deforestation, and the allegations that the cattle (read, dairy & meat) industry exists only to serve leather is not just scientifically blather, but infantile too. Composed and sagacious arguments don't cut ice with people steeped in conspiratorial dross.
