Leather could receive its marching orders soon because a new skin is making fashion waves (if you’ll pardon the pun): introducing the fish skin handbag.
Eco-friendly British fashion designers Adèle Taylor and Heidi Carneau (from Heidi & Adèle) have produced a line of fashionable bags, clutches, card holders and wristlets. But what sets them apart is that these items are made from the skin of eels and salmon.
If you’re thinking that this isn’t very nice for the poor fish that end up in your closet, the company makes use of skins that have been discarded after the salmon harvest. Instead of turning these items into waste, the fashion designers are finding that they can be used to create beautiful pieces. The bags in Heidi & Adèle’s Sea Snake collection are filled with colour: luscious aquamarine, bright green and soothing pink, creating a fashion aquarium ripe for the picking.
Using fish skins is affordable. They have a texture that can be dyed easily and the skins age well. What increases their eco-friendliness is that their production is much kinder to the earth than that of leather. When leather gets tanned, it creates a huge environmental footprint and the process results in pollution and toxins. Leather also has to undergo a process of hair removal, which results in strong chemical use. With the use of fish remains, on the other hand, scales on fish skin are removed by hand and what would find its way into landfills or oceans now gets recycled into pretty arm candy.
In line with their eco-friendly practices, Heidi & Adèle are committed to staying on the sustainable style files. They ensure that they only source all their skins in sustainable ways and have pledged not to use any endangered species in their trendy creations.
What do you think? Would you buy fish skin fashion?
Image credit: soup studio / Dollar Photo Club
