Mccartney’s faux leather is polluting sea, says top tailor
DESIGNERS including Stella Mccartney who promote faux leather as an ethical alternative to animal skin are adding to the pollution of our oceans, according to a BBC expert.
Patrick Grant, the creative director of Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons, who also hosts The Great British Sewing Bee, said the top-drawer designer was helping make man-made fibres fashionable, which was exacerbating the pollution problem.
“Eighteen years ago, she was telling people to switch from leather to polyurethane and now the fish have it inside them,” he told the Daily Mail.
Grant suggested: “Maybe we should eat less meat, but we do eat meat, so we might as well use the hides of the cows we eat rather than kill our fish.”
Although the Mccartney brand uses high-end materials, Grant said he worried that cheaper brands had followed suit in using the plastic fibres.
He explained: “Stella Mccartney’s business is her business and almost certainly Stella is using the very best alternatives, but the problem is that all the people that have seen what she’s doing have copied her and polyurethane has taken off as an alternative to leather. But it is bad – the way it’s made and the way it doesn’t biodegrade.”
A Stella Mccartney spokesman claimed the vast majority of the microfibres found in the ocean are caused by “shedding” which happens in washing machines. Mccartney’s faux leather is it not machine-washable, he added. In
‘Years ago she was telling us to switch from leather to polyurethane. Now the fish have it inside them’
response to the problem of micropollution, campaigners have asked consumers to buy quality clothing for long-term use, rather than taking part in the “fast fashion” trend. It has been estimated that clothes washing causes 1,600 tons of plastic micropollution in UK rivers and oceans every year.
A Friends of the Earth spokeswoman said: “With so many people realising the harm leather and plastic can have on our planet, maybe the leather-look has finally had its day?”