Happy Earth Day :)
If you've read our about page, you know that the one question I kept asking myself while working on our first design is
"Does the world really need another handbag brand?"
I went back and forth over that question for weeks. Much of fashion is an unsustainable cycle of excess and waste and exploitation, but it doesn’t have to be.
We make vegan bags, but I don't consider Freja to be a "vegan" company. Veganism is a philosophy that seeks to avoid the exploitation and cruelty of animals. But for me, and for us, Freja stands for so much more than that. We seek to avoid all exploitation - of animals, of humans, of precious materials, and of the earth around us, and give more than we take whenever possible.
Technically, you can label any item made with animal-free materials as vegan. But that shouldn’t be the standard. To me, a product is not vegan if it was created with harsh chemicals and toxins. It’s not vegan if the bag was made in poor working conditions, with disregard for any pair of hands that worked on it along the way. And it's not enough to make vegan bags, if they’re overproduced with lots of leftover inventory.
So yes, we make “vegan” bags. But we stand for so much more than that. I want the term vegan to be a reflection of our values and the care we put into each and every bag.
I didn’t start Freja to become the biggest company, or make the most bags. I want to make the absolute best bags for people who will cherish them the most. I want to constantly be challenging the status quo and asking how we can be better. I want everyone who wears our bags to feel confident about where it came from, and how it was made, today and especially on Earth Day!
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