Apple skin and recycled materials: Inside Melbourne label Sans Beast’s new collection of vegan bags
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SANS BEAST
WORDS BY ZEMIRA WHITEHEAD
Beauty without the beast.
As someone who was plant-based for roughly 12 years, I still get a flutter of excitement when I come across sustainable vegan brands. Although they’re becoming much more common, for many years there were very few alternatives to animal-derived materials in the fashion industry.
I remember first discovering vegan leather and being so excited that I could still wear ‘leather’ boots and handbags. However, I quickly learnt that ‘vegan’ doesn’t always equate to ethical or sustainable. Brands would (and still do) slap the word vegan across their products as a marketing strategy while neglecting important aspects like worker conditions and environmental impact – two elements that, in my opinion, should go hand in hand with the philosophy of veganism.
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As consumers, we have the chance to put our money where it matters by supporting brands that are genuine about cruelty-free and sustainable fashion. In Australia, Melbourne-born handbag label Sans Beast is setting the industry standard.
After working in Australian fashion for nearly 30 years with over a decade of that chapter spent in the world of leather accessories, Sans Beast founder Cathryn Wills recognised a disconnect. The demands of her professional role – she was Managing and Creative Director of Mimco, one of the country’s top accessories brands with a huge portfolio of leather products – felt at odds with her ethical stance on animal welfare. A year after stepping out of the executive role, Cathryn created Sans Beast in 2017.
Unlike most accessories brands of the time (including the market leader she’d just departed), Sans Beast offered stylish, cruelty-free alternatives to traditional leather accessories. Cathryn preferred to work with relatively novel, eco-friendly materials that have the same look and feel as leather made from animal skins – think recycled synthetics and ‘leather’ made from discarded apple products. As a result, the brand quickly gained recognition for its innovative use of materials to produce bags and accessories without compromising on style or function.
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Sans Beast is now up to its fourteenth season and has just released a new collection, Modern Love. For Cathryn, however, a new collection doesn’t mean throwing out the old. Instead, she revisits the brand’s foundational pieces and refines them to meet changing market demand. As a result, Modern Love sees Sans Beast bringing back a number of its signature designs in new colourways, like a soft sage green and a lush, brown-toned burgundy. There’s also a sprinkling of new shapes that take cues from prior collections and designs.
The new All Hours tote bag is what the brand calls the “lovechild” of two of its signature pieces, borrowing elements from both Universo and Daytripper bags. Designed for daily use, the reimagined silhouette has pockets inside and out with capacity for a charger, notebooks and water bottle, as well as space for a 16 inch laptop in the main compartment.
Alongside the already versatile collection of totes and crossbody bags, there’s also a range of detachable straps to drive up the wearability of each item even further. By switching out the matching strap on the Gemini handbag, for example, you can elevate it to an evening bag with the chunky, gold Elemental chain strap or give it more sporty proportions with the Corridor strap. It’s one way to lower your impact and get more bang for your buck.
Cathryn’s approach to design – favouring longevity, durability and repeat wear – makes sense in light of the decades she’s dedicated to handbags as holding pride of place in our wardrobes. “The enduring affection we feel for our handbag is often greater than that offered to our clothing – perhaps because it will always fit, no matter our body shape and size,” reads a statement on the Sans Beast website.
What truly sets this collection apart, as well as Sans Beast as a whole, are the materials used by the brand. They include recycled synthetics (more on that here), bio-based materials such as pure cotton, Mirum (a natural and responsibly sourced rubber), Desserto Cactus leather and Uppeal AppleSkin, a leather alternative made from apple industry waste.
The latter is worth looking at more closely. Starting its journey in South Tyrol, Italy, it uses apple skins and cores (byproducts from the production of juices and jams) that are recovered, dried, ground and turned into a powder. This powder is then sealed with a resin to create a durable leather alternative that emulates the feel of animal hides.
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It boasts a carbon footprint approximately eight times lower than animal leather production. Unlike animal leather, which requires vast amounts of water, energy, and chemicals for the tanning process, AppleSkin is produced with minimal environmental impact.
Sans Beast also prioritises giving back to the land and community. For every purchase made on the website, Sans Beast donates $1 to the animal rescue sanctuary Edgar’s Mission, and one tree is planted. Sans Beast also advocates for Pay The Rent and does so every month.
In the ever-evolving landscape of fashion, Sans Beast stands out not just for its beautiful, cruelty-free bags, but for its unwavering commitment to making the industry more ethical and sustainable. As Cathryn puts it, “We have a unique opportunity to take the stage and lead our industry into a new future. To not go with the flow but to create our own flow. We have a responsibility to drive some sort of change within the industry. And if we can do that, why not do that and make people feel and look beautiful along the way?”
Explore more from Sans Beast and the Modern Love collection here.
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