to vegan or not to vegan

I've been vegetarian for about 6 years now and a dilemma I often have is whether I should be purchasing leather goods. Most of the time I shop at charity shops or on ebay so the leather bags and shoes that I do own are mostly second hand but there's the odd occasion when I need to buy new winter boots or a new bag and I usually find myself buying leather. Why is this? Quite honestly I don't think I had really thought deeply enough about this issue. Leather just seems to be the go to material for shoes, bags and belts and perhaps out of laziness and convenience I just kept opting to leather without really looking in to other alternatives.  And up until recently my idea of vegan footware was probably something close to Cloggs (no offense but I think you get my point) and in terms of vegan bags I think I was picturing something equally as un stylish. I've made the decision to only buy vegan products now as an alternative to leather and to my delight, times have changed and there are now a lot of brands offering incredibly stylish and fashionable vegan and eco friendly shoes, bags and accessories.

The boots pictured above are available on The Natural Store website for £98 and are by a brand called NAE. NAE are a Portuguese footware company with the slogan "Fashion with compassion". NAE stands for "no animal exploitation" and their strategy is "to propose a fair and animal-friendly alternative, against human exploitation and respecting the environment. Nae does not use any animal products and does not manufacture shoes in factories that practice human exploitation." Check out their gorgeous look book here.

The gorgeous satchel featured above is available from the fashion-conscience website and is by a brand called FC Vegan. Fashion conscience is fast becoming my favourite website for ethical fashion, they have such a great range of interesting and affordable products. Look out for their great sales too as they can have up to 70% off.

Another great brand is Beyond Skin who are another ethical footware label. They work closely with their factories in Spain to ensure that no-one is exploited in the creation of their shoes and endeavor to source their components and fabrics as locally to their factories as they possibly can to try and reduce their carbon footprint. They even have a bridal range :)

If you're interested in the other products featured in my flatlay above then click here to visit my polyvore account and you can shop all the items through there.