by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Soft leather is really nice. It looks great, feels great and an absolutely darling soft leather handbag can certainly be worth the price paid for it. Except for the calf whose skin has been ripped off to make said darling soft leather handbag, and especially for the unborn calf whose skin makes the softest of soft leather. Bummer imagery. So what's a conscientious fashionista to do?

Inder Bedi thinks there are attractive alternatives to wearing hides and hair. His seven-year old company, Via Vegan (www.viavegan.com), has been making vegan-friendly handbags and other accessories since 1997. Vegan fashion - essentially the same as vegetarian fashion, only Bedi wants to push the vegan aspect to the forefront - uses fabrics and plastics without leather, wool, silk or animal-based glues and dyes with a strict zero-tolerance approach. His polyvinyl chloride (PVC) bags, as well as an array of sandals, slippers, gloves, tuques, scarves, placemats and wallets, are now available continent-wide, from Halifax to Los Angeles, all under the distinctive Matt & Nat brand. They also have some products in wicker, corduroy and faux-suede. A full shoe line is in the works, and Bedi hopes that a clothing line - for men and women - will follow. A Ste-Catherine storefront is also on the table. "I want to be the next Tommy Hilfiger or Diesel," he says. A big ambition for a 30-year-old former fashion neophyte who fell into the business almost by accident.

All-human blood, sweat and tears

Raised in an open-minded and supportive mixed Hindu-Sikh household, Bedi says he backed into the vegetarian lifestyle. At 18, he promised a Hare Krishna family friend he would try it for a month; he liked it, but only started to really understand animal rights issues afterwards. He became a full-fledged vegan two years ago. Via Vegan itself grew out of a class project he did while a Concordia marketing student. "I never thought I'd go into fashion," he says. "At the time I was thinking about taking the GMAT or the LSAT. I'd have laughed at the thought of going into fashion 10 years ago."

He hasn't been bad at the strange world of the fashion industry. He designs the products himself, sells them and travels to trade shows regularly - up to 30 a year, he says. He takes pride in his work, but it hasn't been easy. "There's been a lot of blood, sweat and tears," he says. "Literally. I can honestly say I've shed all three."

It's paying off. He estimates that up to 80 per cent of his business is in the States, with New York City the biggest market and Atlanta, for some reason, the second-biggest. The day he sat down with the Mirror in the display room of his office on Chabanel in north-end Montreal, he was flying off to his first show in London, his birthplace, and then Amsterdam.

Bedi believes cracking London will be key to cracking Europe. "The whole vegan movement began in the U.K.," he says. "I kept thinking, England. It's where the vegan aspect would be a major hook for us. Penetrating the U.K. is our number one priority."

He says that, apart from Stella McCartney, there aren't many vegeterian/vegan designers around. While there are several companies that fly the vegetarian flag, like New York City's Moo Shoes, Bedi thinks Via Vegan is pretty much unique in that it is going for slightly higher-end consumers and focuses - for now - on handbags. "Of course, you have Stella McCartney, who's doing things with no leather and no fur, but she's also selling $400 shoes," he says.

Looks good, feels better

Nevertheless, Bedi thinks people are buying his products for the fashion aspect, not its social-conscience-easing. He estimates that more than three-quarters of Via Vegan buyers buy them because they look good and are reasonably priced (all his products retail between $25 and $95). He's going for the urban cool angle, and hopes that young people with some dough will welcome the knowledge that no animals were slaughtered in the making of their wardrobe.

PVC can also ease the global consumer's environmental footprint, says Zipporah Weisberg, in charge of Via Vegan's public relations/vegan outreach program. "PVC is a plastic, so it's not entirely environmentally sound," she says. "But it's not as bad as leather. There aren't as many chemicals used to treat PVC as there are in tanning leather." She says chemicals used in treating leather include arsenic, cyanide-based oils and dyes

Also, she says, the environmental damage is lessened thanks to PVC's non-reliance on factory farming, which requires enormous energy and cost in transportation, feeding and waste-disposal. As leather makes up roughly 10 per cent of an animal's value at a slaughterhouse, boycotting leather, Weisberg says, can have major economic repercussions for the meat industry.

All their products are made in China, but, says Weisberg, because their bigger buyers, including Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Dillard's, insist on customers signing contracts that make sure no children were used in manufacturing, Via Vegan uses the bigger, more ethically reliable Chinese factories to make their stuff. This keeps the company in line with their corporate philosophy

Non-threatening handbags

Bedi realizes that boldly flying the vegan flag on his product can be perilous because of its popular association with radical animal rights groups, and he's been careful in his branding of Matt & Nat products.

The Matt & Nat logo appearing on the products depicts two small figures, one male and one female. "We didn't want to alienate people," he says. "We want to take it mainstream, so it had to be fun, catchy, non-threatening and cross-gender. And people have been eating up its positivity message. They really love it."

The positivity message, printed on the bottom or the side of most of the bags, is similar to Trainspotting's opening voice-over, sans sarcasm: "Choose life, choose positivity… choose to make a difference." Bedi says choosing to make a difference is the central tenet to Via Vegan. "It reflects my own personal belief," he says. "If you're not making waves, what's the point?"