// Wear No Harm // The Vegan Closet

This week, we’re talking trash! That’s right! Gifts that: Reduce. Reuse. Repurpose. 

Upcycled and recycled materials are warm, comfortable, durable, and make a more powerful statement than their animal-based and virgin competitors.

We ❤ to give the gift of cruelty-free fashion as much as we love to wear it!   

With a growing awareness of the increase of pollution, deforestation, global warming, resource depletion, and animal cruelty the holidays offer one of the greatest opportunities to lead by example by giving cruelty-free fashion that is stylish, thought-provoking, and inspiring to everyone on your holiday list!  

All the world loves a holiday! At a minimum we get a day off from work. At the most, grand celebrations and quality time with family and friends. On a deeper level, holidays often ask us to look back at a shared history.

Food is almost always part of any holiday celebration. Good food at its best is a shared experience, and holiday food traditions are a social glue that binds cultures together.

Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

In an eight-part series, we’ll explore gift ideas for a more loving and compassionate holiday. We’ll be unwrapping compassionate gift ideas every Wednesday through December. 

Establishing a vegan wardrobe doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Finding cruelty-free clothing and accessories has never been easier! Whether you’re new to cruelty-free shopping and looking to start with a few basics, or a long-time vegan looking to refresh your wardrobe, it’s easy to wear the change you seek in the world!  After all, fabrics don’t have to bleed in order to have a gorgeous, modern, and well-stocked compassionate closet!  Let's shop!

From A to Z, we’ve assembled an exhaustive list of fabrics, materials, and textiles.  “V” indicates vegan, “N” for non-vegan, and “N/V” are materials that can be made of both vegan and non-vegan materials (potentially requiring a little extra research to make sure no animals were harmed!). 

Happy shopping! 

What happens when you get vegan friends together to make a video?  (Spoiler!) Awesome sauce!!

Synopsis
Enticed by a mysterious invitation promising fun, fashion, and fame, four strangers came together at a secret location in the heart of Downtown Denver.  They knew they would star in a video.  They knew they would be outfitted with designer cruelty-free fashions.  But little did they know...

Occupying the 8th position in the Chinese Zodiac, the sheep (goat, or ram) is among the animals that people like most, symbolizing such character traits as creativity, intelligence, dependability, and calmness. They are gentle, sensitive animals who are emotionally complex and highly intelligent.

That’s why, we’re celebrating the Year of the Sheep!!

Now that the wrapping paper’s all swept away, it’s time to start thinking about the year ahead. The custom of starting the New Year with a resolution has good intentions behind it. With a little self-reflection, we all see areas of our life that we’d like to improve and bad habits that we’d like to shake. But for most, our resolutions don’t get very far as the force of habit take hold again. This year, instead of making the same old list of quit-this, lose-that, self-improvement resolutions, resolve to be the change you want to see in the world.

There’s no question that the holidays can be a stressful time. And navigating the holidays as a vegan can be even more stressful: wondering if there will be anything you can eat at family gatherings, obligatory company functions, and holiday parties. Hoping to avoid awkward conversations to explain why are you not eating. These can lead to feelings of being judged or that you are judging others (as many give “thanks” by taking innocent lives). Or feelings that you are breaking precious family tradition.

Most leather comes from the skin of animals raised for meat. Contrary to popular belief, animal skins (along with wool, fur, feathers) are not the byproduct of the meat industry. In fact, a cow’s skin can be the most profitable portion of the cow’s body, making up half of all profits of slaughterhouses that process cattle. Leather is a not a by-product, it is a co-product. This means that leather helps make the meat industry—and animal farming—profitable, which is destroying the planet.