Is it Leather? Writes on LinkedIn: Leather didn’t fall out of favor because it failed. It wasn’t durability, performance, or sustainability that pushed it aside. It was optics. It was spin and headlines that told half-truths. It was activist campaigns – funded by corporate interests – that painted leather as unethical in order to unleash increased profits. It was retail brands pouncing on the opportunity to swap real materials for cheaper synthetics, boost profits, speed up buying cycles, and still get credit for “doing the right thing.”

And what miracle material have they been successful in using to replace real leather – yep, plastic! Rebranded. Repackaged. Relentlessly marketed. PU. PVC. Microplastic-laced textiles wrapped in feel-good labels like “vegan leather” and “cruelty-free.” It sounded progressive. It looked ethical. But naturally (or rather un-naturally) it was neither.

Real leather is a byproduct — a responsible use of existing natural resources that would otherwise go to waste. It’s durable. Repairable. Long-lived and biodegradable. It supports traditional crafts and rural economies around the world.

But that truth didn’t trend – so it got buried in a tsunami of greenwashing. And in its place, we got plastic – marketed as morality. We got a flood of low-quality, short-lived “alternatives” that fall apart in months and stay in landfills forever. The result? A sustainability disaster wrapped in a marketing campaign.

Consumers didn’t turn away from leather because they knew better. They turned away because they were told to. They were sold a solution – one that profited brands, not the planet. So no, we don’t have a leather problem – we have a truth problem. A marketing problem where we – as an industry – have allowed misinformation to shape perception. And that false perception is devastating our industry.

It’s time to reclaim the narrative. To remind the world that not all that glitters is green. And that materials like real leather, used responsibly, are part of the solution – not the problem.