PETA India’s Manager of Fashion, Media and Celebrity Projects, Monica Chopra, who founded the vegan lifestyle portal The Eco Trunk and worked as a fashion designer, writes about vegan fashion in India.
Vegan fashion is a hit across Bollywood, as more celebrities and designers-to-the-stars develop their consciousness and increasingly embrace compassionate materials. Faux fur. Fake snake. Mock croc. The world of entertainment has entered the golden age of cruelty-free vegan fashion that takes into animal welfare and environmental concerns into account.
Award-winning actor Alia Bhatt is the founder of an all-vegan clothing line, Ed-A-Mamma, while Dia Mirza backed Greendigo, a fully vegan and organic sustainable brand for kids. For more mature fashionistas, popular actor Sunny Leone’s collection of 100% vegan and organic consciously-crafted athleisure wear—I Am Animal—was named “Best Vegan Activewear” by PETA India. Leone’s cosmetics line, Star Struck, is also vegan andgiven the “beauty without bunnies” animal-friendly certification for refusing to test on animals.
The list goes on. Shraddha Kapoor is a vegan fashion style icon who refuses to wear fur, leather or other animal skins.
Actor and supermodel Milind Soman and his wife, Ankita Konwar, starred in PETA India’s vegan fashion look-book, which encouraged their fans and followers to choose clothing free from animal exploitation.
Sonakshi Sinha also starred in a print ad campaign with PETA India, motivating consumers to ditch leather. And Deepika Padukone, named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, has an animal-friendly vegan beauty brand called 82°E.
Bollywood is evolving, just like the rest of the world. Celebrities more and more understand that using animals for clothing is unnecessary and horrifically cruel. Fur farming is so vile that it’s banned in many countries around the world. Animals on fur farms spend their joyless lives locked in tiny, filthy wire cages. They are slaughtered using crude, excruciatingly painful methods. The suffering continues within the filthy, unsanitary world of leather and exotic skins. Cows and buffaloes on the way to slaughter in India are crammed into vehicles in such high numbers that they often suffocate or break their bones. Once they reach their destination, they are typically killed in front of one another. Snakes, crocodiles, and lizards are fully conscious when they are cut open and skinned.
What’s more, dozens of leading designers have pledged to stop using leather made from living beings. Gaurav Gupta, Masaba Gupta, Monica and Karishma, Aneeth Arora, Ranna Gill, Shyamal & Bhumika, Sonaakshi Raaj, Siddartha Tytler, Rina Dhaka, Vikram Phadnis, Rocky Star, Atsu Sekhose, Purvi Doshi, Akshat Bansal and others keep it stylish without stealing an animal’s skin. And there are so many beautiful materials and fabrics for India’s elite fashion designers to work with now. These days, all natural, sustainable leather produced without suffering or slaughter is made from plants like mushroom, coconut, mango, banana, cactus, pineapple and more . Sarjaa by Anjana Arjun, daughter of actor Arjun Sarja, was awarded “Best Vegan Bags” by PETA India. They are made from sustainable vegan leathers from plants.
