Vegan Fashion: What Are You Wearing - with Annick Ireland

“The truth is that when you look at sustainability it can mean so many different things it’s a continuum.”

Becoming vegan seems to be the decision that plagues the mind of a lot of us. We keep getting told that eating meat is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, but there is still so much of it on the shelves, and a lot of us have grown up with meat being the staple ingredient of our diet. It’s hard to make that shift.

Eating meat is one thing, but as this conversation will hopefully shed some light on, there are other ways to start bringing veganism into our lives. Namely, with what we wear. The fashion industry is another major contributor to climate change that needs a bit of a revolution, we have already talked about fashion on this podcast, and Annick Ireland is another leader who’s making waves in the industry. She is the CEO and Founder of the organization, Immaculate Vegan (immaculatevegan.com), which searches for the most sustainable, vegan fashion and homeware. Like with vegan food becoming more and more available, Immaculate Vegan is making vegan fashion more accessible to everyday people, including someone like myself who likes fashion but doesn’t know much about it! It ranges from high class sustainable brands to everyday wear.

Annick is another example of someone who decided to apply their skills to align more with her own values, and created a brand that that’s now having a massive impact. You can’t help but feel that the more people who make this sort of shift, the more likely it is that we’ll start seeing the positive impacts on our planet.

Annick Ireland became vegan in 2016 after adopting a greyhound from the Retired Greyhound Trust and making the connection between the pets we love and all other animals. Wanting to also wear her values, she searched far and wide for stylish, high quality vegan fashion that was sustainable too – and struggled!

However, after many hours, days and months spent on the internet and Instagram, she discovered that a wealth of beautiful vegan fashion brands were out there, but they were hard to find. So with a background in marketing and business, she realised she could combine her passions by bringing together the best and most beautiful vegan products in the world, and make it easy for others to discover and buy them.

Annick lives with her partner in North London and, when not hunting out wonderful items from every corner of the globe, she spends her time reading historical crime fiction, going for long countryside walks, wild swimming, and drinking Pinot Noir with friends.