Vegan tales

While some people choose to not eat animal products, it's possible to find alternative animal apparel as well

Camie Heleski loves animals. As a professor of animal behavior and welfare, Heleski also is an owner of cats, dogs and horses, showing she treasures living creatures at both her workplace and home. Except when it comes to her clothes. Heleski is a supporter of wearing leather, fur and wool — the three materials many vegan animal lovers stay away from. “I have sweaters made out of wool and cashmere, I have shoes made out of leather,” she said.

“I feel very comfortable using animals for recreation or for producing clothing items. I just want to make sure that people are respectful of how they go about using animals.”

That’s where Heleski makes an effort to teach her students that “animal rights” varies greatly from “animal welfare.”

“‘Animal welfare’ is respecting the animal, meeting their needs, but still using animal products. Whereas ‘animal rights’ is, in simple terms, more looking at animals having moral rights similar to human rights.”

But for Erica Kubersky, it’s not a matter of animal welfare or rights, but avoiding the use of animal products altogether.

Ironically, Kubersky, co-owner of New York City boutique MooShoes and its Web site MooShoes.com, opened her first all-vegan shoe store in a former butcher shop.

“It was definitely a good story to tell,” she said. “We hopefully took all the bad karma out of the building.”

Today, MooShoes carries 120 to 150 pairs of vegan shoe styles in their store, and countless pairs on its Web site. Kubersky decided to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle at the age of 8, and went completely vegan in high school.

“I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons,” she said. “So once I realized where everything I was eating came from, I became horrified with how I was wearing other people’s skin, wearing other people’s babies.”

In recent years, Kubersky has seen a huge increase in the public interest of animal-friendly clothing.

“I think people are becoming a lot more aware of the issue and learning more,” Kubersky said. “I think in general, a lot of people want to do the right thing, and in general I think a lot of people think it’s not right to harm animals.”

What MooShoes.com offers is “vegan leather,” a water-resistant microfiber material similar to leather, but that isn’t the difficult vinyl of the past.

“The incidentally vegan shoes are made from vinyl, which doesn’t breathe, doesn’t break in well,” Kubersky said. “I know all the shoes we carry are made from a synthetic microfiber, and last just as long.”

Heleski draws the line when people start thinking of the animals as a tool.

“When that becomes their philosophy, I think that’s problematic,” Heleski said.

As a professor in the Department of Animal Science, Heleski said she frequently encounters students who are intolerant of the beliefs of some vegans who choose not to wear animal products.

“As far as people who have chosen the vegan lifestyle, I would just like to see people be respectful of that choice,” she said.

“I occasionally have a vegan in my class and sometimes you’ll see some of the other students snicker. If they’re not trying to pin it on other people, they should be allowed their own personal choices.”

With her suede moccasins, linguistics freshman Amanda Dalaba isn’t too concerned with using animals for clothing.

“I don’t automatically think it’s an animal product,” she said. “It’s not like I’m wearing a big fur fox thing.”

Dalaba bought her shoes at Meridian Mall’s The Shoe Department, 1982 W. Grand River Ave., for $25. But she said she doesn’t feel guilt for donning a leather product.

“I’m not the one that goes out to kill the animals,” she said. “So I don’t really think about it.”

Published on Monday, January 28, 2008