VAUTE COUTURE: All-Vegan Fashion Brand

At the Mirror, we are passionate about great design, as well as ways to accomplish great design, cruelty free. We were very excited to accidentally come across Vaute Couture (“Haute” with a “V” for Vegan, pronounced “Vote”) the “The World’s First All-Vegan Fashion Brand.” The company is based in Brooklyn NYC, and was founded by Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart as “a quest to take animals out of the fashion equation, and create the perfect winter dress coat warm enough for a Chicago winter.” We came across VAUTE while keeping an eye on New York Fashion Week (ok, really following Kendall Jenner), and it was noted that Vaute is the first vegan label to show at during the Week. CNN said “Hilgart is the rebel of fashion week, VAUTE is breaking runway history.” PETA named Ms. Hilgart the “Most Influential Designer”, and Glamour Magazine & Conde Nast called Leanne a “Gamechanger, embodying courage, conviction, and creativity.” VAUTE has also been featured in WWD, Elle France, BusinessInsider, and more.

Celebrity fans include Angela Kinsey, Alicia Silverstone, and Emily Deschanel.

From the Vaute website, “The line launched in summer of 2009 in the depth of the recession, to hundreds of preorders from customers who had never seen the coats in person, most of which had never met Leanne, and would wait months before receiving them. This proof of concept allowed Leanne to produce her line’s fabrics with the same cutting edge mills that work with Patagonia and North Face. Without a background in fashion but 8 months of fabric research, Leanne realized that marrying these high tech performance textiles with structures, cuts and finishes of dress coats created a coat that had the look and feel of a beautiful wool coat, but the warmth and protection of a ski coat, and without any animal fibers. Her entire first production run was funded by her earliest supporters.”