Calling all fashion students, budding designers and ethical style pioneers – together with compassionate footwear company Beyond Skin, PETA is looking for ideas for a brand-new vegan shoe!
Brighton-based Beyond Skin combines a cruelty-free approach to fashion with a real glamour factor. Its gorgeous shoes, which don’t contain any leather, wool, exotic skins or other animal products and are made from recyclable materials.
Why Vegan Shoes?
For the leather industry, millions of cows endure the horrors of factory farming, including extreme crowding, disease, food deprivation and mutilations such as dehorning, tail-docking and castration, often without painkillers. Because of improper stunning, they may face the final incision still conscious and terrified. Turning animal skin into leather also has a grave impact on the environment. It requires the use of highly toxic mineral salts, formaldehyde and other chemicals, while tannery runoff contains large amounts of pollutants, such as salt, lime sludge, sulphides and acids. Please see Fashion Designer Stella McCartney’s Video for PETA here.
Now the boutique brand has teamed up with PETA for this exciting competition. It’s a great opportunity for an ambitious young designer to kick-start a career and see his or her creative idea go into production. So if you have a vision for a sustainable stiletto, a leather-free loafer or an ethical espadrille, please submit your entry!
To enter, please read the competition details here and then e-mail your designs to contest@peta.org.uk by 13 December 2013.