Sustainable chic: NOAH’s vegan Italian lifestyle

You don’t just give up on ‘made in Italy’ quality. In terms of fashion and craftsmanship, the ‘belpaese’ can’t be beat. Wherever you put your nose, you can always smell a scent of Italy, a pleasant fragrance even when we talk about shoes, those of the NOAH brand, vegan shoes with a German passport but Italian mother tongue.

A small army of sailing shoes, ankle boots, ballerinas, sneakers that can be called by name, just like in a school class: Lorena, Stella, Agatha, Rebecca, Alessandro, Leonardo, Diego. A way to give almost a personality to footwear, the one chosen by the company owners who, instead, prefer not to mention their name. “For us – the press office says – it doesn’t matter having a designer, but achieving the goal of creating quality products that offer an alternative cruelty-free, respecting the animals, as well as the people who produce them and wear them, and also the environment “. A goal that the brand, born in Germany in 2009 with the desire to combine Italian know-how and style with respect for the environment, seeks to pursue on several levels. Raw materials, quality and working conditions.

NOAH shoes are all made of 100% vegan materials. For the upper, micro-nappa and micro-suede derived from the weaving of polyester fibers; cork, rubber and recycled materials for soles. In the manufacturing process, the use of glues is extremely limited and where it is possible, replaced with seams expertly made by selected small Italian companies. The real strength of the brand: the craftsmen.

“For us the Italian style is the best – they specify from Germany – for this reason our products are made entirely in Italy, from the material to the finishes“. Moreover, in Italy working conditions respect national and European regulations, a point on which NOAH beats a lot, because its philosophy of sustainability passes first from respect for people, which later translates into that for the environment and for animals, whose protection represents the third major chapter of the company strategy, aimed at demonstrating that an innovative alternative to the traditional leather shoes is possible. To say it there are the numerous certifications (Peta, Vegan Society, Cruelty Free) and the prizes rounded up by the team of NOAH over the years, one among all the Vegan Fashion Award 2014 assigned by Peta Deutschland to Dora, the ankle boot as the best women’s shoe.

The conquest is also, according to NOAH’s owners, in having finally broken the equation: vegan equal food. In other words, stopping eating meat is not enough to change the course of world industry, or rather it is not the only tool. The production of meat in fact goes hand in hand with that of the skin. Finding alternative solutions also in fashion would speed up the process, because replacing the skin with vegan products would mean, for example, more cereals available to people instead of livestock, as well as preserving biodiversity and consequently combating climate change. In short, it is a chain of good actions that bring equally good results.

The last challenge of NOAH, or perhaps the first one, is the purely fashion one: to achieve all this with style and elegance. Italian, of course, to leave a footprint on the planet, but all ecological.

Novella Di Paolo