(GREEN/FASHION) Beyond Skin, a fashion-forward, vegan shoe company, successfully reached their funding goal with the help of Change.org in order to make their innovative and eco-friendly line a little more wallet-friendly. Beyond Skin’s ‘vintage style aesthetics’ accommodate the lady who is hip, classy, and unique, but most importantly has a heart that throbs for animals. With 100 percent recycled material, this compassionate brand guarantees sustainable and fair production. Beyond skin is also launching a more wearable line. Their freshly released Autumn-Winter 2013 line utilizes bold geometric designs, tribal patterns, warm colors, and a spice for femininity. Not only will your purchase make you a smart consumer, but a portion of the proceeds also go PETA. Take that, Marc Jacobs! — Global Animal
Beyond Skin
It is no secret that leather from animals is neither compassionate, environmentally sound or sustainable. As our population continues to rise most of us are already aware that very soon we will all be pressed into making some significant changes to our lifestyles, our consumption and how we produce many of our everyday purchases.
Beyond Skin was created to prove that quality, stylish, luxurious, compassionate alternatives are possible and to show this we have tried our utmost to make ourselves a fashion brand first.
Firstly, I must clarify that Beyond Skin is a 100% vegan company, so we use absolutely no animal materials in our products. This is a guarantee. As it says on our resin shoe soles, ‘Genuinely Not Leather’ a familiarly unfamiliar catch line turned on it’s head!
The uppers of our shoes are made from a selection of faux leathers, polyurathane, (PU) which is sourced from Italy & is fully breatheable, anti-bacterial, and no, they do not make your feet smell!
Here is an example of the Archie style which is 100% PU shoe.
All of our shoes are lined with a fully breathable pleather lining, also Italian made faux leather material. It’s high quality & durable so we know that it will keep your feet supported through the day & night.
A feature material that we also frequently use, is an alternative to real suede—a microfibre faux suede called ‘dinamica’ which is made in Italy also. See the theme here—we source everything for our vegan shoes from within the EU. The Fiona is a vegan wedge that only uses vegan faux suede ‘dinaimca’. It’s amazing because it doesn’t water mark, so great for English summers & rainy winters. We think the Fiona is great for wedding shoes, garden parties & general trotting around.
Our trademark is using bright printed or woven fabrics. We source these fabrics from Italy also, where they are made up to order, so we know that absolutely no waste is left over. We love using printed fabrics for our collections, both in the summer and the winter–summer wedges with vivid prints are bold & fun to wear. Winter boots made from courageous animal prints, knee high boots in killer leopard print or more subtle simple textured fabric give you eco-fashionista a point of difference & a story to tell.
Here is the Maya vegan court shoe which features a beautiful lilac zigzag weave and is teamed with a vegan faux suede heel cover & trim.
The soles of our shoes are made from a part recycled rubber resin & the insoles are all made from recycled cardboard. (If you’re a shoe industry person, you’ll know that this is pretty standard). We also use all animal-free glues, so you can rest assured that no-one or no animals are harmed in the making of our gorgeous creutly-free vegan shoes.
Our vegan shoes all arrive wrapped up gently in hot pink tissue paper, with a branded fairtrade cotton shopper bag that comes with our Beyond Skin logo on one side & the zebra on the other. The shoe box itself is made from recycled cardboard & the little box card inside, as well as all of our printed material, is from a sustainable or recycled source.
We really try to use the best alternatives we can, but as we are a small company, it’s not always possible to use the most eco-friendly options, but we endeavour to do what we can, when we can. Wherever we can we have endeavored to position ourselves alongside other non-vegan footwear brands showing that fashion and ethics are not mutually exclusive, but more importantly to place vegan products in the mainstream which is where they need to be in order for long-term change to take place and to fundamentally make a difference.
For us this softer approach and way of being fits our brands philosophy and ethos. We aspire to demonstrate that a vegan label can be as successful as any other footwear brand, thus contributing and affecting the decisions other brands make about their use of leather and exotic skins.
More Beyond Skin: http://blog.beyondskin.co.uk/2013/07/what-are-vegan-shoes-made-from/
