Sustainable fashion designer Stella McCartney has partnered with Mabel Industries on a new collection made from Uppeal apple leather.
Calling it a “pioneering” vegan alternative, Stella McCartney took to Instagram today to introduce her SS24 Frayme and SWave bags made from Mabel Industries’ Uppeal vegan apple leather. McCartney said in the post she loves that the handbags have the same look and feel of leather “without compromising on my cruelty-free values.”
McCartney introduced the vegan leather at her recent Sustainable Market that featured 22 material innovators. According to the McCartney website, Uppeal is a partly bio-based vegan leather that’s versatile and waterproof. Mabel and Frumat developed the material a decade ago. The material is made by taking apple waste, including pulp, skins, and seeds, left over from the juice and jam industries. While those materials would typically be sent to landfill or incinerated, Mabel and Frumat combine the pulp with polyurethane to create the vegan leather.
The material featured in the Stella McCartney Winter 2023 runway collection as the Frayme bag tote, bucket, and shoulder in the Alter Croc design, and in the Winter 2022 collection, which saw the S-Wave baguette bag, and as a wallet clutch last year. McCartney has explored alternative leather for the Frayme collection before, including the first-to-market mycelium mushroom leather bags.
The apple leather is soft and pliable, McCartney says, and can be embossed or laser-printed. McCartney uses a crocodile-inspired embossing technique, calling exotic skins “cruel, unethical, and inhumane.” According to the animal rights organization PETA, Vietnam exports approximately 30,000 crocodile skins annually.
Other labels, including Paris-based Coperni, have experimented with apple leather. In 2021, the label partnered with Maisie Williams on its first handbag, which was made from the material. “Coperni and I have been quietly working on our collaboration for some time and I’m so proud and excited to finally share what we have created together,” the then-24-year-old Game of Thrones star said in a statement. “The bags are made from apple leather and I hope will inspire more people to both shop and produce with materials that contribute towards a more sustainable future.”
McCartney shared a similar sentiment on announcing the SS24 collection. “I am on a mission to create a fashion industry that does not harm our fellow creatures, is less impactful on Mother Earth and produces zero waste,” McCartney says in a statement on her website. “I hope others will join me in this future of fashion.”
Related on Ethos:
