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sitanshi talati-parikh

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Tag Archives: PETA

Haute and Vegan

16 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Fashion & Style, Publication: The Voice of Fashion, Sustainability

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Ethical Fashion, Gunas, PETA, Stella McCartney, Sustainability, Sustainable Fashion, The Voice of Fashion, Vegan

Published: The Voice of Fashion, August 16, 2018

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While India’s tradition of khadi and cotton is cruelty-free, vegetarian or vegan consumers have been hard-pressed to find brands that deliver the same aesthetic of leather, with style and panache. Cheap alternatives are often made from poor quality and non-environmentally friendly plastics. These have begun to be replaced with durable and better quality manmade materials, which may consist of recycled or sustainable materials, or non-PVC polyurethane by brands that are conscious about ethical values as well as the ecological impact. A few of the brands that deliver the goods make the shortlist below, including some tried and tested favourites.

Stella McCartney: Pretty much anything from her collection has haute appeal, but above all she is a designer who is respected for spearheading the conversation about ethical fashion and walking the talk. Because of McCartney, ethical luxury is no longer an oxymoron. The Stella Star shoulder bags and the Stella Logo Hobo are winners from her latest collection. The hobo, available in a range of pop and muted colours takes alter-nappa to another level of sexy.

Gunas: Brought up between Ludhiana and Pune, Sugandh Agrawal founded Gunas in 2009 in New York, where she currently lives. She has invested years of research into finding the sweet spot between affordability and quality for a chic leather alternative. The Tippi Tote in a range of colours (though the mint shade is divine) is roomy, comfortable and well-crafted, while their recently-launched men’s bag crafted in MULBTEX™️  is made from mulberry leaves.

Jill Milan: Started by a vegan, Jill Frazer, the luxury bags are handcrafted in Italy and have been seen regularly on the international red carpets, carried by celebrities like Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence. Their stylish Newbury Street Portfolio from their latest collection looks like a trendy clutch, but the interior can accommodate an iPad.

Vendula London: Quirky, fun bags and accessories, they form creative scapes like English Garden, Sewing Shop and Prosecco Bar, with a layered, textured design. Theirbook-shaped coin purse will give the pickpocket a run for his money.

O bag: Hailing from Italy, these bags are customisable and also offer interchangeable handles and styles. Made of EVA polymer, they are waterproof, lightweight and resilient, with various conscious options. The O Bag mini herringbone from their Spring 2018 collection allows you to swap trims, handles and inner bags—changing the look of the same tote.

Piñatex is a strong and flexible textile made from pineapple leaves developed by Ananas Anam. Being an upscaled byproduct of waste, it is environmentally friendly. It is used in a range of products including ethical footwear, clothes, accessories and furnishing. This Things I Miss Giantletterbag and these Altiir neo-classic biker jackets are cool and functional.

Pelcor is a Portugal-based brand that offers cork skin products as a sustainable alternative to leather—cork being eco-friendly. Besides bags and shoes, they also have tech accessories like this laptop sleeve and pet products.

Plum is India’s first 100 percent vegan beauty brand that is priced sensitively and offers a range of products including the Angel Eyes Kohl Kajal which comes with an easy-blend smudger. Founded by an Indian chemical engineer, Shankar Prasad, and created in a London design studio, Plum is a sustainable brand using natural ingredients.

Matt and Nat’s Mitsuko in a range of pastel shades is a perfect office bag which can be slung or carried in the hand. It had me at the recycled cork label, recycled plastic bottles’ inner lining and the price tag that is also a bookmark. The quality is so good that it doesn’t disintegrate or wear out over time. The brand, started by an Indian in Canada, Inder Bedi in 1995, is a pioneer in the affordable cruelty-free accessories space, with exacting aesthetics. They have great options for men as well.

Save the Duck is a third-generation Italian brand creating cruelty-free outerwear. They replace goose-down feathers to line jackets with PLUMTECH® which keeps the jackets warm and light. The jackets, like this puffer vest, are easily foldable and great for travel. They have options for both genders.

Other online resources that cover clothing, shoes, accessories and beauty:

Ethica: An online retailer that gives the low-down on ethical fashion and emerging designers while offering a curated list of labels to shop from. Their ‘stories’ section keeps the dialogue alive.

Modavanti: Online retailer that speaks the language of sustainable and ethical fashion. They offer a unique ‘badge’ system—one of the eight badges is vegan—and for a brand to retail on this site, they need to have at least one of the badges.

Ethical Elephant: Started by animal welfare advocate Vicky Ly, the blog covers makeup, skincare and hair brands.

PETA.org: The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals keeps a tab on the cruelty-free brands and PETA Mall has a directory of them across fashion and beauty and including health and food. Countries have their own local PETA chapters as well.

The Bright Side of Sunny

02 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Features & Trends, Publication: The Voice of Fashion

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India, PETA, Sunny Leone, The Voice of Fashion

Published: The Voice of Fashion, July 31, 2018 as “Sunny Leone’s Business Calendar”

Sunny Leone, Canadian-born Indian-American actress, model, entrepreneur and former porn star represents the intriguing sexual freedom that Indians lack. Today, 37-year-old Leone—who gave up her adult film career in 2013, a year after her Bollywood debut with Pooja Bhatt’s erotic thriller Jism 2—has a string of brand endorsements, splashed across buses, billboards, dailies, television channels and going viral on the Internet. She is the star of her autobiographical web series, Karenjit Kaur – The Untold Story of Sunny Leone which released last month on Zee5. Overt sexuality has always had a tenuous relationship with Indian society. In a country where sex is considered entertainment—albeit behind closed doors, or bawdy and obscene when explored in public—there is a vicarious pleasure in watching, being associated with and fantasising about someone who is willing to bare it all. But is that all there is?

The face of causes
The anti-smoking ad film, 11 Minutes (2016) captures Leone’s appeal in India through the last wish of a man (theatre actor Deepak Dobriyal) dying of the consequences of cigarette smoking. He wants to be with a woman: Leone arrives like an oft-rendered caricature of a coy village bride. The public-service campaign—which uses stereotypes to engage, and set the stage for the anti-climax—crossed one million views on YouTube in 48 hours, reaching two million views in three days, as reported on media and advertising news site, Afaqs!. And that is not surprising, given that Leone—who incidentally doesn’t smoke—has been, on more than one occasion, the most Google-searched person in India.

The female bosom forms the story behind Leone’s public service campaign #DetectToDefeat (2016) by digital media channel Aur Dikhao, to promote breast cancer awareness. The ad captures the deeply uncomfortable male gaze in India, ending with a, presumably, topless Leone looking into the mirror, saying: “If we women paid as much attention to our breasts as men do, breast cancer cases would reduce to half.”

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Leone has been associated for almost six years with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India. Her 2017 campaign has her, with musician-husband Daniel Weber, in what has been described on the PETA site as “wearing little more than high heels and tattoos between them,” advocating “Ink Not Mink.” On the effectiveness of Leone as an endorser, Sachin Bangera, associate director of celebrity and public relations, PETA India, says: “Calls and emails started pouring in after (Sunny) Leone’s campaign on the adoption of homeless dogs and cats, asking us about the procedure to do so. Close to 15,000 people joined the online campaign to help ailing elephant Gajraj after Leone shared his condition on social media. Gajraj has since been rescued.”

The power of titillation
While Leone’s persona drives the public service campaigns, it is the interest and controversies sparked over her Manforce condom ads playing on objectification of the female body, which fuel her power as a headline-grabber. On the Manforce condoms’ official YouTube channel, Leone’s popularity is on the rise: their 2014 dotted condoms ad with Leone shows over 3.1 million views in four years, while their flavoured condoms ad, Man Kyun Behka, from last year clocked over 2.2 million views in one year alone.

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Besides being an entrepreneur and the face for her own line of clothes, perfume (Lust) and makeup (Star Struck launched March 2018 and is PETA-certified), Leone has endorsed a wide range of products that include Chase mobile phones, Iarra sunglasses, Dholpur Fresh desi ghee, energy drinks like Gold Fogg by R Z International and XXX by Viiking Ventures, online jewellery portal Jewelsouk.com, Big Boy Toyz pre-owned sports and luxury cars, and Mehak Kesar Shilajit pan masala. The “A” grade luxury brands may not touch her with a pole but new FMCG brands evidently find her attractive.

Veteran celebrity photographer, Dabboo Ratnani, who has worked with Sunny Leone, regularly gets requests from people asking for an introduction to her. “Leone’s endorsement creates a strong image change for the brand—she effectively challenges the status quo, immediately creating a buzz,” says Ratnani. Speaking about the Gold Fogg energy drink campaign, Rahul Vinakiya, managing director, R Z International, has said on Afaqs!, “We opted for (Sunny) Leone as our brand ambassador as she perfectly suits our brand tagline ‘Live Your Way’. She completely believes in living life on her terms.” Says Leone in an article in the Indian Express this year, “I don’t think I have ever done my work worrying about people judging me.”

Leone who has grown up playing street hockey with the boys and is, as of last year, the co-owner and brand ambassador of Premier Futsal franchise Kerala Cobras, puts her game face on for Torque Pharmaceuticals’ JAL mineral water. In the ad film, a clean-faced, pony-tailed Leone is described by a male voice-over as, “a diva, a fighter, on the top of her game.” The video ends with a camera focusing on ever-so-bouncy breasts in the background and the bottle in the foreground with Leone saying: “Kyunki, jal hi jeevan hai” (Because water is life).

Veteran image guru, Dilip Cherian, finds that Leone checks all the three boxes to be a successful brand endorser: ‘Risqué’ value, resonance and reach. “Leone is someone who has confronted the reality of who she is. Her risqué factor is 9.8—there is nothing further to be revealed, and therefore the downside is zero. Her name has resonance and her reach is global and immense.” But above all, in an era where the smartphone has brought porn into every home, Leone represents the new reality of openness in Indian society. He says, “She is a woman to boldly go where no man has gone.” As Leone notes, in her web series, in response to the question about how some Indians can’t differentiate between a prostitute and a porn star, “There is one similarity…guts.”

The girl next door
Leone—who is admittedly bisexual—is a girl you can take home to your mother. Shocking as that may sound, keeping her fair, chiselled face and the in-your-face augmented breasts aside, probably a part of her appeal, locally, lies in her easy “next-doorness”. Her web series suggests that she is just another girl, ridiculed in school, who made a tough—and unorthodox—choice. With 13.9 million followers on her Instagram, what you gauge from Leone’s posts is a girl who separates her work life from her personal life. There are stuffed toys, pink roses for Valentine’s Day, goofy moments, and gym snapshots. She demystifies her work life, by capturing the steamy visuals with little jokes: a behind-the-scenes picture of her in a bathtub from the shoot of the reality survival show Man vs Wild, has the tongue-in-cheek caption: “Just lying around at work”. Her styling has mass appeal, she is not a star with sharp dance moves or serious acting chops, but her aura—a “good” girl who knows when and how to be “bad”—circumvents it all, and allows her to reign in the over-a-crore-price-tag endorsement category.

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Leone, born Karenjit Kaur Vohra, married Weber in 2011. She posts photos of them as a regular couple, often remarking on how “handsome” he is, or how he is the “sweetest man” she knows. In March 2018, she posted a photo of them in blue jeans and a white tee—a classic all-American family—with their three children, including the newly-born-via-surrogacy twins. At the time of this story, Leone is unable to respond because, as informed by her agent, she has “taken some time off from everything” to be with the children.

We tend to gravitate towards authenticity and Leone’s life, even while rife with Hindu immorality, is real, exciting and aspirational. Not because everyone wants to be a porn star, rather, because she is, like Vinakiya said, living life on her own terms. In a society that imposes restrictions on everything from food to marriage, Leone represents that elusive freedom, all the while being the girl a man would perhaps aspire to have…next door.

Cruelty-Free Closet

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Fashion & Style, Publication: The Voice of Fashion, Sustainability

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Cruelty-free fashion, Ethical Fashion, Gunas, PETA, Stella McCartney, Sustainability, Sustainable Fashion, The Voice of Fashion, Vegan

Published: The Voice of Fashion, July 23, 2018
(Additional media added to this post.)

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Is it surprising that a country with more vegetarians than the rest of the world put together isn’t a prime market for cruelty-free fashion? Perhaps not. In India, being vegetarian in diet and branded in lifestyle has equal social footing. Genuine leather and silk, and branded goods that use these products are de rigueur. After all, India is the largest consumer and the second largest producer of pure silk in the world.

Pure silk made by boiling silkworms to extract thread; genuine leather, suede and fur made from animal skin including those of endangered species; natural or cultured pearls extracted by prying open and inserting irritants into live oyster shells; pillows and jackets that use plucked bird feathers; products made with red dye that comes from crushing cochineal beetles; testing of beauty products on live animals are among the regular items that cause harm to living beings on their journey to us. While deep followers of religious texts like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism describe ahimsa, the concept of ‘non-violence against all life forms’, as open to interpretation and customarily linked to what is ingested rather than worn.

Western culture has opened up the dialogue on vegetarianism or veganism as secular-ethical choices that trickle to every aspect of one’s life. Musician and PETA supporter, Prince, famously said, “Compassion is an action word with no boundaries,” and refused a fan who tried to give him a leather coat during a concert, saying, “Please do not kill a cow so I can wear a coat!”

In India, the deeply entrenched class system has filtered into the post-liberalisation lifestyle as well. Gandhian beliefs are relics to an increasingly brand-conscious society that draws self-worth from icons of status. Hyderabad-based Kusuma Rajaiah, who holds a patent for eco-friendly mulberry ahimsa silk—silk made without harming pupae—states that while his business has grown from 2 lacs per annum to 1 crore per annum in less than two decades, nearly all of his ahimsa silk fabric is produced for export. It may not be within the local psychology to accept the shift, after all, pure silk, due to its natural sheen and texture, has always been considered to be a symbol of royalty, and, historically, was used primarily by the upper classes. So what chance do ‘cheap’ artificial materials have? Faux fur, made from cellulose or synthetic fibers; pleather (polyurethane); ultrasuede, made from vegan microfiber; or vegan silk, made from synthetic, bamboo or man-made yarn, may not always match up to the ‘real’ thing.

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Pervasively, Indian shopping choices are linked to value. Indians would not be willing to pay top rupee for something not ‘genuine’ and to get high-quality artificial goods and designs can become pricey. Says Sugandh Agrawal of New York-based vegan brand, Gunas, who has spent eight years researching the sweet spot between a viable price point and enduring fabric, “No one wants to pay good money for durable leather alternatives, and the cheaper alternatives peel off. Besides, it is not a priority to invest in a vegan bag.” The starting price for a Gunas shoulder bag is $100 and can go up to $250. Stella McCartney, the world’s first ‘vegetarian’ luxury brand (2001) has nailed style as well as gone deep with the materials. For example, their Falabella Go backpack is created using recycled polyester fabric made from ocean plastic and costs $935.

Vanity and status may play a prominent role, but the most consequential factors in making this decision are simply awareness and deep conditioning, along with the non-existent need to question or defy tradition and rituals. Gurgaon-based professional, Zeal Sharma, who is a Certified Main Street Vegan Lifestyle Coach and Educator, finds with people she coaches and speaks to, that people don’t realise how they may be a part of an industry that has commercialised the exploitation of animals. Many people believe that leather goods come from dead animals, and they don’t question bone china crockery or down feather duvets, despite the self-evident names. “Leather isn’t a by-product. It is the most important co-product of the meat industry. In India, where most of the world’s leather comes from, cows often march hundreds of miles in extreme dust and heat to slaughter, without a single drop of water or food. Workers break cows’ tails and rub chilli pepper into their eyes in order to force them to keep on walking after they have collapsed from exhaustion,” says Stella McCartney in a video for PETA.

“Lack of awareness coupled with hidden facts and our inherent naïveté that ‘good’ companies would do the ‘right’ thing have led to an increase of these products. Moreover, they are easily accessible and now we are habituated to them,” is Sharma’s experience. Eventually, it boils down to change and the will to do so. While PETA India’s website lists approved vegan fashion labels, and even talks about vegan weddings in India, evidently demand follows supply. As Gunas waits to find an Indian partner to launch in the founder’s home country, Agrawal notes that even her extended family hesitates to make the leap. Perhaps it will take a celebrity ‘Gandhian’ fashion icon to set the bag rolling on this concept.

|  Filling the gaps between words.  |

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