Photo courtesy of: Donna Oakes
We are excited to share an article about one of our Animal Ambassadors Leanne Mai-Ly Hilgart founder of Vaute Couture and her involvement in New York Fashion Week. She describes her attempts at changing the fashion industry and using cruelty free practices in her clothing line. The article discusses the use of fur and leather in fashion and how Leanne is changing that!
VEGAN COUTURE: FAUX MEETS FABULOUS
February 7th, 2013
For the full article from CNN click here
Her activism began when she was 10 years old with an elementary school social studies project in suburban Chicago on factory farming and the fur industry. She became vegan at 17 and continued her activism in high school with a campaign for alternatives to animal dissection in science class that, with the help of national group Animalearn, eventually became Illinois law.
This week, she took her philosophy to New York Fashion Week, where she debuted her first ready-to-wear line in a solo show Wednesday, less than five years since starting Vaute Couture in 2008.
Stella McCartney, Charlotte Ronson and other big-name designers have created fur-free collections in previous seasons. But Vaute Couture is the first independent fashion house to show during New York Fashion Week with animal- and cruelty-free built into its brand DNA, from its ultrasuede elbow patches to Thinsulate-lined winter jackets.
The line’s aesthetic goes beyond faux fur and leather, using organic, recycled and high-tech fabrics in an effort to redefine traditional outerwear staples. Before a packed showroom in New York’s Chelsea gallery district, models, accessorized with rescue dogs available for adoption, showed off Vaute’s line of coats, dresses and pants of waxed canvas, velvet and moleskin (a heavy-napped cotton twill fabric, despite its name), among other materials. Even the shoes, by Love is Mighty and Brave GentleMan, were vegan.
Though Vaute’s line comes at a time when consumers seem more willing than ever to pay a premium for products from companies or businesses whose values align with theirs, industry insiders say the company is swimming against the tide in a season expected to bring new twists on leather and fur.
But Hilgart, an activist at heart, is undaunted. She believes that there are people like her who care about where their clothes come from and how they’re made. It’s Vaute’s role to make those options more accessible,
Stella McCartney, Charlotte Ronson and other big-name designers have created fur-free collections in previous season