Okay, I feel like we're going to make enemies again. After criticizing marketing, accounting bureaucracy, mocassins, soldiers, French Industry, designers , car-wash, social networks, gluten-free and so on, today it's the leather industry's turn.ici), la bureaucratie comptable (ici), les mocassins (ici), les militaires (ici), l’industrie française (la), les designers (ici ou la), le car-wash (ici), les réseaux sociaux (la), le gluten-free (par ici) et j’en passe, aujourd’hui c’est au tour de l’industrie du cuir.
The situation: It is fashionable today to throw criticism on certain materials to sell us alternatives presented as (vast joke) more "respectful of the environment", which helps in the meantime avoiding real disturbing questions, aka the profound questioning of our consumption habits and our irresponsibility in the face of generated waste.
Leather is one of the last expiatory victims of this market-media wave of greenwashing, the speech held trying to make us believe that it would be better for the good of our planet to buy a pair of moccasins in "banana leather" (sic), which lifespan will be at best four months in dry weather, rather than a pair of genuine leather moccasins (waste from the food industry) which can withstand the aggressions of our disordered climate for years (anyway, buying a pair of moccasins exhibits real bad taste, but that's not the question). We even recently reached the heights of bullshit with the emergence of this magnificent oxymoron that is the notion of "vegan leather", a ruse to speak in more positive terms of leather replacement, of fake leather, of faux leather, of leatherette...
The object of our wrath: matériO', trying since forever to fight these amalgams hiding mercantile designs, was invited two weeks ago to exhibit some extraordinary materials including two "FAUX LEATHERS" at an international fashion fair. What was not our surprise when we were asked to remove these terms, under the pretext that exhibitors had complained, using the #010-29 decree that stipulates that the terms of 'imitation leather' or 'faux leather' are prohibited for the marketing of products ... but it turns out that materiO' does not sell anything, at least not that.
What Hypocrisy! After having for years allowed to flourish in its midts more than ambiguous appellations such as "vegetable leather" to speak of a vegetable tanned leather, simply because it allowed the tanners to embark the best of both worlds, the nobility of leather and a closer proximity to nature, without worrying for a second about the confusion that this ellipse could cause for the consumer, here we are waking up now, playing the startled virgins and prohibiting clear and honest terms as 'imitation leather' or 'faux leather', which is a real aberration and a rearguard fight...
Why the heck should marketing nonsenses lead to an equally excessive come back and sterile linguistic prudishness? matériO' will continue to call a spade a spade, a moccasin a lack of taste, a faux leather a faux leather, and a real nonsense a real nonsense… we constantly claim our total independence, it seems beneficial to us to be able to enjoy it in front of so much hypocrisy.
O! Newsletter #116
