Behind the scenes with Viva La Vegan
If you have visited a vegan fair there’s a good chance you will have seen a Viva La Vegan clothing stand. Or you may have seen a number of animal activists proudly wearing the Viva La Vegan brand.
Lisa talks to founder Jay Charlton about how she created a brand that embraces fashion as activism.
Before you launched Viva La Vegan you were already a designer for a number of high-street fashion brands. What impact did turning vegan yourself have on that career?
I had designed for many of the main UK high-street brands for over 15 years. The environmental impact of this and social justice concerns about the true cost of the fashion industry led me to leave the mainstream fashion industry in search of something better, kinder and greener. It was my passion for veganism that gave my business focus, from which my brand Viva La Vegan was born.
How hard have you found it to source vegan materials to work with?
There is obviously no place for the use of animals in fashion. There are amazing plant-based alternatives from leathers made from pineapple, mushroom, fruit skins and wine, to luxurious silks made out of lotus flowers and everything in between.
As a t-shirt brand it’s easy to ensure our materials vegan as well as our dyes and inks. What is harder is being environmentally minded. This is why our apparel is made from either organic or recycled fibres, cotton, bamboo, Tencel, and even recycled water bottles. Our hope is to also include hemp, and ultimately the dream would be zero waste manufacturing – true circular fashion.
Viva La Vegan is an unapologetically vegan brand. Were you consciously trying to create clothing that campaigns?
‘Unapologetically vegan’ – nicely put; I love that! Our designs have grown in strength, as my veganism has. When I first started VLV I still had a very mainstream design mentality. In my first collection I tried to appeal to the widest possible audience with something for environmentalists, veggies, vegans, and animal activists. In hindsight this may have watered down the message, but it was great for showing me where my passion lay and where I wanted to be positioned: fashion as activism (which is now the brand’s tag-line and design ethos); clothes as statement / message wear. It doesn’t have to be sweary or offensive to be effective, but I like the artwork and message to provoke a vegan dialogue, start a conversation, and to plant a seed in the viewer’s mind.
There are lots of vegan businesses launching right now; how have you created a company that stands out?
When we started 6 years ago there were not the same number of vegan clothing brands that there are now. Much of what was available was rather aggressive in message and they were often printed on mass-produced basic cut t-shirts. Standard cotton (non-organic) is one of the worst polluters of the fashion industry. I like to think that VLV stands out as a premium design-led brand with a strong ethos that is rooted in the fibres of its garments, from seed to statement. We talk about, and aim to be part of, the revolution that the fashion industry needs ethically & environmentally. I aim to design garments that stylistically sit alongside their high-street counterparts but carry a weightier message in statement and manufacture, providing apparel for conscious consumers and fashionable vegans, and breaking down old stereotypes of what vegans wear.
When we first launched a lot of people didn’t understand our ethos; they wanted the design but not the price tag. They were used to high-street bargain T’s at £5 and less, and they questioned our choice to use organic cotton, support manufacturers with carbon neutral production and that pay fair salaries. Happily, more people now understand all this and even seek us out because of our ethos. In a bid to reduce our impact further we were the first of the vegan brands to do a re-loved collection: reworking vintage and preowned clothes, especially denim and camo into one-of-a-kind statement pieces.
I think another difference that makes us stand out is that many of the new companies, especially online, call themselves vegan but are not run by vegans. Many are simply cashing in on a trend, with generic designs and print-on-demand – they have little invested in the company or the cause. We are vegan to the core. The message is everything to us and something we invest heavily in, getting the majority of our designs hand screen-printed, as I personally prefer its hand feel and durability. We are lucky to work with a fabulous independent vegan printer, so it feels good to help support another vegan business through our own.
You recently launched a clothing line where a percentage of profits are donated to an animal sanctuary. Do you believe vegan businesses are more successful when they actively give back to the cause?
Veganism is such a compassionate way of being, and I think that giving back has real value for the customer and brand. We all like to feel like we are helping something we are passionate about. From very early on we always did certain charity designs to raise money for animal and vegan causes from animal sanctuaries, ocean clear up charities, to the hunt sabs and wounded badger patrol. We’ve always loved to help as much as we can. Once we had met Beneath the Woods animal sanctuary and heard the horrific story about the Pembrokeshire #53pigs (and fallen in love with our sponsor Pig that we named VeeVee!), they got under our skin and into our hearts and we just had to help. They currently urgently need to raise a whooping £25k for groundwork and animal supplies. We have badges, a beautiful X large embroidered back patch and a sweater where a % from the sales are donated. Earlier in the year we also organised a charity raffle raising over £2,000 for their pigs.
Another cause we champion is tree planting. We plant a tree for every garment we sell, so we have paid for thousands of trees to be planted. There is no getting away from the fact that fashion is a dirty business, but we are trying to be as green as we can.
You have partnered with a number of brand ambassadors who share your message. How have you found opportunities for collaborations?
Everyone that chooses to wear our apparel we see as our ambassadors, spreading the vegan message. We currently have one ‘official’ brand ambassador: the fabulous John Awen. John is an accomplished published author and travels the country giving talks on veganism, being a voice for the animals. He recently wore one of our t-shirts for an interview he did with a LADbible that has already been seen by over 1.5 million people. Our ‘Compassion without action is just observation’ t-shirt has become his signature look and he’s rarely seen without it. A little birdie tells me that it will also make an appearance in his new story and recipe book that is being penned as we speak.
Although not an official brand ambassador, Louis Michael from Gogglebox has worn many of our t-shirts on the popular Ch4 TV show, repping the vegan message mainstream, even wearing on camera our popular (but less than subtle) ‘Zombies eat flesh- Go Vegan’ tee. You’ll also find his face on our new website, having modelled for us on our last two photoshoots.
As a clothing brand you still do a lot of grassroots marketing, such as local vegan fairs. How important has it been to keep this face-to-face contact with your customers?
We are still very much a festival-fronted business. My happy place is being on the stall talking ‘shop’, chatting veganism, and helping to nudge vegan curious into giving it a try. Prior to Covid 19, my partner Luke & I did festivals up and down the country almost every Saturday and Sunday.
Face-to face is everything to us: this is where we meet the people that wear our designs and understand the causes and messages that are important to them. We are now trying to up our game online to cover the loss of most festivals, but it’s not the same.
Apart from the fact that it’s not easy because I’m not social media savvy, nothing quite compares to festivals. But we are blessed to have a loyal band of customers that continue to support us during this crazy time, and to whom we are most grateful.
How hard was the transition between being employed by someone else to now running your own business? What additional skills did you have to learn?
When employed I worked as designer, senior designer & design room manager. I worked incredibly crazy hours and to tight deadlines, I earned a good salary and lived a very privileged lifestyle for a while. I made a good name for myself, and I was lucky to travel the world for meetings and sourcing. I picked up invaluable skills and understanding about the industry and met and worked with some amazing people. I now work in a modest 1-woman studio, most of the traveling is now for festivals, and payment is more in passion than in pounds.
Apart from needing to learn some website and social media skills, the hands-on-ness of my employed years has stood me in good stead for the skills I needed for a business. I had a very focused, tough female boss back then, and I have an even tougher one now – me.
But what is the same is the buzz I get when I see someone wearing my design – whether it was before and my designs were in the front window of a shop, or now when I see someone in the street out at a demo wearing one of our t-shirts. Inside, I still do a happy dance; maybe even more so now, as I hope the person wearing it has some of the same ideals for the world as me, and that gives me more hope for a kinder, greener, vegan future.
If people are thinking about launching their own vegan business, what one main piece of advice would you give them?
Research your market thoroughly, know your customer and your competitors, make sure you’ve got something different about your offering than what there already is, and make sure it’s something you love as it will likely consume your life.
Learn more about Viva La Vegan at their website: www.viva-la-vegan.com
