Leather

Up to 40% of the world’s hides and skins are wasted. At a time when plastics are choking ecosystems and entering our bloodstreams, this is not just an environmental loss — it’s a failure of imagination. In 1990, virtually every hide and skin from the global meat industry was made into leather. Today, the Leather […]

By the late 20th century, the world was seeing a shift towards the east and the 21st was predicted to be the “Pacific Century.” East Asia’s rapid growth—Japan, the Asian Tigers, and then China—seemed destined to dominate global economics and culture. This started to shape global trade, manufacturing, and consumer markets, including leather. My own travels from […]

“The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.” This quote, often attributed to Alvin Toffler, is one I find striking and have used often, but it rings truer today than ever. In recent years, I have thought the big global forces like climate change, political polarisation, disruptive technologies etc,. would not show […]

Last week, David Millar quietly announced that July 31 would be the final day of the Institute for Creative Leather Technology (ICLT), marking the end of over 100 years of leather training at Northampton. This draws to a close a lineage of UK leather education stretching back into the 19th century with Charles Lamb at […]

The latest print and digital edition of ILM (July/August 2025) devotes considerable space to the amount of fossil fuel material used in leather. “Deplasticising leather” mostly discusses this in terms of surface coatings but notes that fossil fuels can still be found deeper into tannery chemicals. Tom Hogarth adds an illuminating companion article in which […]

A legal challenge brought by the German Leather Industry Association, Verband der Deutschen Lederindustrie (VDL), arguing that labelling plastic-based products as “apple leather” misleads consumers and undermines the integrity of genuine leather, was upheld by the Higher Regional Court of Cologne. It pronounced that the use of the term “apple leather” without actual leather content was […]

“The separation between art and craft is not innocent. It is a colonial, casteist and capitalist construct designed to divide and hierarchise creative labour. This binary, like many others imported and internalised in the Indian art world, is not rooted in our lived histories. It is imposed, borrowed, and selectively applied.” The quote above is […]

The sudden announcements from major sports companies that they would no longer use kangaroo leather in their sports footwear seemed like a rerun of the campaign 25 years ago against David Beckham and his Adidas boots. As then, the position taken by the companies today lacks logic and mirrors some politicians and even, sadly, other […]

As Europe swelters, we head this week to the hottest part of the UK, on the outskirts of London. Capel Manor College on the outskirts of London was founded in 1968 to offer training in horticulture and animal care. It soon added environmental conservation, floristry, arboriculture and saddlery. Saddlery not only as a natural adjunct […]

This is an important moment for cattle – or, more accurately, livestock such as cattle and sheep. A group of scientists complained via a well-publicised letter to newspapers that a push by New Zealand and Ireland to get GWP* used to measure livestock emissions, rather than the older GWP100, was an abuse intended only to […]