Vegan leather: What’s behind the term?
Includes: Definition of vegan leather | Definition Leather | Alternative to leather | Buy Vegan Leather Alternatives | Manufacture
What is vegan leather?
The term vegan leather mistakenly refers to materials that are similar in feel and appearance to genuine leather. Both organic and synthetic fabrics are used for the production of the leather alternative.
For example, many vegan leather alternatives are made from teak leaves, cork, pineapple, mushrooms and various plastics.

Vegan leather is increasingly sought after
In the graphic below (source: Google) you can see the search history in the German-speaking area for the term vegan leather.
Gibt es veganes Leder?
Hier müssen wir Sie leider enttäuschen 🙂 veganes Leder ist genauso wie Blattleder nur ein Modebegriff und de facto falsch.
Zudem werden unter dem Begriff “veganes Leder” auch noch zahlreiche Produkte vertrieben, die ganz und garnicht nachhaltig hergestellt werden.
Jedes Kunststoff-Kunstleder wird gut und gerne als vegan beworben. Zwar ist dort kein echtes Leder verarbeitet, wirklich nachhaltig sind die oft billig produzierten Plastikvarianten dann aber auch nicht.
Immer mehr Kunden suchen nach Produkten aus veganem Leder
Hier verhält es sich ähnlich wie beim Thema mit dem Begriff “Blattleder”. Sieht man sich die eingegebenen Suchbegriffe in Suchmaschinen genauer an, so stellen wir fest, dass auch hier stark nach veganem Leder gefragt wird.
Z. B. kommen immer wieder Besucher über folgende Begriffe auf unsere Webseite:
- Rucksack veganes Leder
- veganes Leder Meterware
- Vegan Leder
- veganes Leder kaufen

The definition of leather
Genuine leather comes from animal production. The term vegan leather is therefore per se wrong. De Fakto, therefore, there are no bags made of vegan leather.
Using vegan leather as a term for products is misleading the user and unfair
The IT law firm from Munich deals with the topic in a separate article. It states that vegan leather for the promotion of products does not comply with the competition guidelines. The following is a quote from the website www.it-recht-kanzlei.de:
Unfair: “Veganes Leather”
Source: IT Law Firm https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/lederimitate-vermarktungsbezeichnungen.html#abschnitt_14
The use of the term ‘vegan leather’ for leather synthetics is therefore also misleading, since the reference to the freedom of animal ingredients by the word ‘vegan’ is not sufficiently capable of removing the impression of a genuine leather product caused by the word ‘leather’. This is because the term “vegan” is mainly used in connection with the human diet and thus largely for the declaration of a particular nutrition or individual food, but not for the identification of the freedom of materials of animal origin in textiles. In this respect, the term ‘vegan leather’ is even capable of implying the use of a special high-quality genuine leather in double misleading references.
Alternative to leather
Vegan alternatives to leather are made of a wide variety of materials. In our shop you will find, for example, leather alternatives made of teak leaves.
Buy vegan products from leather alternatives
If your search entry was to buy vegan leather, we may be able to offer you suitable alternatives.
Production of the vegan alternative to leather

Our vegan products are made from teak leaves and feel like real leather.

Some of the leaves are harvested and partly picked up from the soil.

The harvest is sustainable, so that no monocultures have to be planted.

The production is carried out by hand under fair conditions. Here we help with the production.

Here we are a guest of the family of the manufacturer “Mr. Leaf”