Vegan Vogue: PETA India Champions Vegan Fashion at India Fashion Forum 2025
PETA India’s booth at the India Fashion Forum (IFF) 2025 on 28 and 29 January at Whitefield, Bengaluru showcased the best of sustainable and cruelty-free innovations and brands redefining fashion. Launched in 2000, the IFF is India’s largest and most influential event dedicated to transforming fashion retail, bringing together key players from across the fashion industry offering unparalleled opportunities for curated knowledge dissemination, peer-to-peer networking, and business development. The event served as a prime platform for networking among leaders in the business of fashion.
Highlighting the transformation of the fashion industry, PETA India Chief of Corporate Affairs, Ashima Kukreja, shed light on the rise of vegan fashion, its growing influence, and its promising future, inspiring both businesses and consumers to embrace ethical choices.
A 2023 Deloitte report confirmed this compassionate shift: “Indian Gen Zs and millennials show higher levels of climate concern than their global counterparts, and are more willing to pay higher prices for sustainable products or services. To reduce their environmental impact, Indian Gen Zs and millennials are eating vegetarian/vegan diets, avoiding fast fashion, making their homes more energy efficient, and researching companies before purchasing from them.”
Paving the way forward, companies like PETA India awarded NIIST, have developed vegan leather from agricultural waste. Other companies and institutes worldwide have turned plants and agricultural waste from pineapple, banana, grape, coconuts, and other plant production into fashion items. Reinforcing this message, PETA India’s exhibit featured an extensive range of compassionate brands, offering consumers an array of chic, cruelty-free products that allow them to express their values through fashion luxurious vegan silk sarees from Taneira, stunning embroidered sarees from Arshia Singh, a warm and animal-friendly winter trench coat and jacket by Virgio and cool vegan leather jackets for men and women made out of cactus by Five F Agroecology! Making a statement about vegan fashion’s stupendous growth, chic accessories and bags by Recore, Green Hermitage, Vyakti and Rijac were on display along with hemp and Tencel material samples by Weaving Vibes. Aretto and Vegan Virya’s expansive range of kid’s shoes and sneakers and women’s footwear by The Frou Frou Studio and Sole Art Fashion caught the eye of many at the event. Representing vegan fashion accessories shoes, wallets and belts were showcased from Ethik and Lusso Lifestyle.
Powerful videos of national and international celebrities speaking out against the suffering of animals used for leather, wool, and fur helped raise awareness among visitors about the cruelty behind these industries.
PETA India staffers also liaised with compassionate businesses looking to obtain “PETA-Approved Vegan” and Beauty Without Bunnies certifications.
Compassionate fashion means showing respect for all living, feeling beings. Animals caged and killed for their skin are forced to live joyless, traumatic lives and suffer painful, inhumane deaths. Moreover, the industry is environmentally unsustainable: it pollutes the planet and causes widespread damage to biodiversity and human health. But vegan fashion continues to evolve. Vegan leather and other animal-friendly options are available nationwide in nearly all major shoe and clothing shops. Over 1000 companies worldwide are using the “PETA-Approved Vegan” logo to enable socially conscious consumers in India and elsewhere to identify vegan products at a glance while shopping.
