Under the Skin - Understanding Leather's Supply Chains with Alice Robinson

WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

There's much debate around the sustainability credentials of leather vs vegan alternatives (most of which are still PU - polyurethane). Is one natural and bio-degradable and the other simply plastic? Sorry, but it's not that simple, not least because today's global supply chains are so long and complex. Then there's all the toxic substances used in conventional tanning. And we haven't even talked about animal cruelty yet. But amidst the confusion, there are obviously better ways to do it than cutting down the Amazon to graze cattle, then drenching the hides in heavy metals.

Meet British accessories designer turned local leather supply chain builder, Alice Robinson. With her business partner Sarah Grady, Alice runs Grady & Robinson, a startup that’s trying to rebuild the local leather supply chain in the UK, in a totally traceable way, connecting regenerative farmers with processing and vegetable tanning in Britain.

Their goal is to offer a product that traceable to its farm source, made entirely in the UK, and biodegradable at end of life. That’s a big ask, because the industry has all but disappeared in Britain, so if you’re a emerging handbag designer – as Alice was when she was studying at the Royal College of Art a few years ago - and you want to buy single-origin leather locally, you pretty much can’t. This didn’t sit well with her, so as you will hear, Alice decided to do it herself - buying a sheep five miles away from her home in rural Shropshire, and documenting its entire journey from the field it lived in, through its slaughter, through to the tanning processes and accessories production.

If you're vegan and don't believe in using animal products, that works. But if you're still eating meat and wearing leather, you need to understand how it's made.

Today Grady & Robinson is working with Mulberry and the Institute for Creative Leather Technology at Northampton University, through the government supported R&D project, The Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology to try to figure out a way to finish leather at a commercial scale in the UK, with ingredients that are known to be sustainable, natural and biodegradable.

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