H&M debuts leather alternative made from wine waste

Swedish multinational clothing company H&M has debuted an eco-friendly clothing range that includes items made from a leather substitute crafted from grape pomace.

As reported by Vogue, the leather-like material forms part of the popular fashion brand’s Conscious Collection, made up of clothes crafted from eco-friendly materials.

Called ‘vegea’, the material is a soft vegan leather alternative made from grape marc, which H&M discovered in 2017.

In addition to clothes, ‘vegea’ is also used in a number of handbags and pairs of shoes in the Conscious Collection. The range also features clothes made with a dye created from spent coffee grounds.

The collection was unveiled this week and will go on sale at H&M outlets around the world on 26 March.

“Going forward, we need to be using more bio-based materials and use more waste in our collections,” Pascal Brun, H&M’s sustainability manager, told Vogue. “These collections are here to help enable the scale of these new innovations, and make them more commercial to us and to other brands,” he added.

The retailer already makes a number of its garments from bio-based materials. H&M debuted its first capsule collection made of organic cotton over a decade ago. It is aiming for 100% of its materials to be recycled or sustainably-sourced by 2030.