My basic philosophy about being an eco-friendly consumer: most of the time, the greenest thing you can do is not buy anything. I stand by that. If you junk your perfectly viable car to get a Prius, which takes a lot of energy to make, you might feel better in the Whole Foods parking lot but the only cause you’re helping is the thriving green-washing industry that wants to give you smugness for dollars.
But not all choices fall into the category of “to buy or not to buy.” Some are more like “to buy these boots or those boots.” So I was excited when last night’s launch party for sustainable style website Ecouterre introduced me to Kaight — a Lower East Side eco-friendly boutique featuring some familiar labels (Linda Loudermilk, Matt and Nat) and some new finds (dreamandawake). I wanted to shop! I wanted to mingle! I had to go to “Heaven”! In the words of California’s dubious patron saint of the environment: “I’ll be back.” (Although The Terminator never added “… to try on those really cool slim fit organic cotton pants,” I always felt it was implicit in his tone.)
Alemos bootie by Coclico
Discovery of the night was these boots (made in gray exclusively for Kaight) and the brand, Coclico. Yes, they’re leather — tanned with vegetable dyes. Read about the company’s sustainability aims here.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the leather thing recently. I wear leather shoes, jackets, belts, reasoning that it is a by product of the meat industry which, though I don’t contribute to it, is a very real fact. I wish there weren’t a giant mountain of dead cow skins, but since they’re there, shouldn’t we do something with them? Or is that lame, because by wearing leather I am just perpetuating the idea that it’s fine to slaughter animals to satisfy a whim? There’s the animals rights issue, and then there’s the environmental question. From the point-of-view of sustainability, isn’t it less wasteful of energy to use those hides for shoes and clothing that to manufacture those things from scratch? So many mind-boggling calculations, and before you know it you are living in a cave wearing shoes made of newspaper and banana skins.
And if you’re a vegetarian, you’re probably yawningly familiar with the old “you wear leather, don’t you?” chestnut (the spoken or unspoken follow-up being “you are therefore a giant hypocrite, so stop silently judging me and come chow down on this steak”). Why some meat eaters think it’s necessary or socially acceptable for them to call us vegetarians on our choices and stick them under their blurry (lard-smeared?) moral microscopes, I have no idea. If by “hypocrite” they mean “imperfect,” guilty as charged. But it’s illogical to suggest that a vegetarian who wears leather might as well be a full on meat eater. If I were a self-righteously evangelical veggie who flinched at the sight of a lamb chop and made barfing motions in the presence of bacon, I’d understand the need to niggle. I’m not and I don’t. But I sometimes think that switching to all vegan footwear and belts would at least save me from having the same discussion five thousand times. So I’ve been considering it, and I’ve been looking at vegan shoes, and it’s even harder than I thought to get anything aesthetically pleasing in between plastic sandals and Stella McCartney (neither of which is an option right now). Most of what’s out there and affordable is pretty uninspiring, as previously noted. Maybe sustainably produced vegetable-dyed leather is a good enough solution for now — or at least, for the next time I really need a new pair of shoes. I know it won’t keep the meat eaters quiet. I carry a ham sandwich in my pocket for that.