Dear Frances debuts responsibly made vegan collection

Footwear brand Dear Frances has launched its first eco-vegan collection featuring four season-less styles from the brand’s core collection.

Dear Frances launched in 2016 as a digitally native brand, as a new-luxury fashion label seeking to redefine classics with an ethos of warmth, simplicity and easy elegance. At the heart of the brand is a sustainability approach that focuses on three key elements - slow fashion, conscious production and aligned partnerships.

This approach ensuring quality, long-lasting styles, made with ethical material choices free from chemical treatments, has led to an eco-vegan collection being responsibly made and produced in Italy, using fruit waste from apples, which are by-products of the food and drink industry.

This natural waste is used to substitute other raw materials of chemical origin in the products, lowering the emissions and the consumption of energy through the entire production chain, and the apple residual is naturally dried and turned into an apple powder which is then used in the production of the collection.

Jane Frances, designer and founder of Dear Frances, said in a statement: “We have always been committed to being a sustainably conscious brand aiming to reduce waste where possible and so when launching our debut vegan collection, we wanted to be sure that not only is the collection leather-free but that it is also created in a sustainably conscious way.

“We didn’t want to just replace leather materials for plastic that was going to cause lots more harm to the environment, so we spent the time searching for a natural alternative that produced a product that felt as soft and durable as our mainline collections. In doing so, our vegan collection has been a few years in the making.”

Dear Frances adds eco-vegan footwear collection

The debut vegan collection includes four styles, including two vegan leather boots, a minimal ankle boot with block heel and lace-up combat boots. These sit alongside the classic low-top trainer, available in three colourways, and sliders that come in green, tan and black croc. Prices range from 295 to 895 pounds.

In addition, all of Dear Frances shoes, from its mainline and seasonal collections to the vegan collection, are all packaged in recycled shoe boxes made with the process residues from organic grapes, sourced locally from crops surrounding its workshops in Italy. The paper is FSC Certified, GMO-free, contains 40 percent post-consumer recycled waste and is produced with EKOenergy, resulting in a 20 percent reduction in carbon footprint.

The footwear brand also partners with organisations such as Soles4Souls to help save lightly worn shoes from ending up as landfill and instead distribute these to people in need of shoes as part of its strategy to move towards a circular economy.

Dear Frances’ debut eco-vegan collection launches online exclusively at dearfrances.com on November 4.