Vegan Clothing & Plant-Based Leather Search Trends in the UK

On October 4th we celebrated World Animal Day and now we're slowly approaching World Vegan Day (November 1st). Naturally, we're dedicating this month to our animal friends and highlighting all the wool, silk, animal testing and leather free alternatives we could find. But is it just us, the vegans, or are really more and more people interested in animal-free fashion these days?

As more people than ever oppose fur farming¹, some wonder whether leather could be the next material that becomes out of style. There are plenty of vegan leather alternatives and even more reasons to stay away from animal leather.

That is why we decided to look closer into Google Trends analytics and discover the search trends for animal-free fashion and vegan leather alternatives in the UK. Are ethical consumers in the UK interested in vegan fashion? And what type of vegan leather is gaining the most attention?

More specifically, we looked at the use and popularity of these 9 search terms:

1. vegan clothing

2. vegan fashion

3. vegan leather

4. plant-based leather

5. cork leather

6. cactus leather

7. PU leather

8. pineapple leather

9. apple leather

 

The vegan fashion & vegan leather alternatives search trends in the UK

Based on average monthly searches from 2021, we discovered that UK customers look more often for vegan clothing rather than for vegan fashion. And also, UK customers prefer to search for vegan leather rather than for plant-based leather.

Looking at the countries in the UK, we found that:

• England and Wales have the most interest in vegan clothing
• Northern Ireland has the most interest in vegan leather
• Scotland has the most interest in PU leather

But let's dive a bit deeper – it's time to look at the counties of the UK.

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Vegan clothing & vegan leather search trends in the UK counties

We looked at all of the UK countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), and also at county-level data, but we found that searches for vegan fashion and plant-based leather alternatives are highest in the counties of England.

This is probably due to the fact that the population in England is much denser than in the other UK countries. But when we took a look at city-level data, a few cities from Scotland and Northern Ireland made an appearance too, so stay tuned for that.

For now, let's look at the search trends in the UK counties:

• Greater Manchester, Somerset, Surrey and West Yorkshire mostly search for vegan clothing
• Cambridgeshire and Essex mostly search for vegan fashion
• Bedfordshire, Greater London, Kent and West Midlands look most often for vegan leather
• East Sussex and North Yorkshire search mostly for plant-based leather
• Hertfordshire, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire have their eyes on PU leather
• Cumbria, East Riding of Yorkshire and ​​Hampshire search most often for cork leather
• Devon, Merseyside and Oxfordshire search for cactus leather
• Cornwall mostly searches for pineapple leather
• And South Yorkshire mostly looks for apple leather

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Vegan clothing & vegan leather search trends are most popular in these UK counties

• Vegan clothing, vegan leather, plant-based leather, ​​PU leather, cactus leather and pineapple leather are most popular in Greater London
• The search term vegan fashion is most popular in Somerset
• The search for cork leather is most frequent in Surrey
• And searching for apple leather is most popular in South Yorkshire

Of course, we didn't stop there and we also looked closely at the cities in the UK.

Vegan clothing & vegan leather search trends in the UK cities

• Bath, Bolton, Huddersfield, London, Manchester are most interested in vegan clothing
• Cambridge, Cheltenham and Nottingham mostly search for vegan fashion
• Bristol, Glasgow, Molesey and Newry look most often for vegan leather
• Birmingham, Brighton, Lewes and Newcastle upon Tyne search mostly for plant-based leather
• Bishop's Stortford, Conwy and Preston have their eyes on PU leather
• Aberdeen, Godalming, Hook and Taunton are most interested in cork leather
• Ashford, Hemel Hempstead, Oxford and Plymouth most often search for cactus leather
• While Edinburgh and Forres mostly look for pineapple leather
• Lastly, Sheffield mostly searches for apple leather

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Vegan clothing & vegan leather search trends are most popular in these UK cities

• Vegan clothing, vegan leather, plant-based leather and pineapple leather are the most popular in London
• The search for vegan fashion is most frequent in Bath
• The search term PU leather is most popular in Preston
• The search for cork leather is most popular in Godalming
• While the search term cactus leather is most frequent in Oxford
• Lastly, the search for apple leather is most popular in Sheffield

We're happy to see that the interest in vegan fashion is popular among UK consumers. It is also interesting to see that demand for plant-based leather alternatives is different across the UK. And we can't wait to see new innovative vegan leather materials and how they will change the vegan fashion game!
 

Sources:

1. 'Public Opposition Against Fur Farming.' Fur Free Alliance. n.d.

Notes

This blog was based on data from Google Keyword Planner. To provide you with more insights, we explain how the raw data was processed.

The keywords analyzed for this article (with estimated average monthly searches – rounded here, in the Notes, but not rounded for the calculations) were the following: vegan clothing (>2800), vegan leather (>2000), PU leather (>1400), vegan fashion (>500), cork leather (>200), plant-based leather (>100), pineapple leather (> 80), apple leather (>70) and cactus leather (>40).

Looking at the countries, we found these percentages and converted them to actual numbers to enable comparisons among popular search terms. As an example, we found that the most popular search term in England is vegan clothing with 89% which corresponds to about 2496.8 average monthly searches. For the search term vegan fashion, the percentage was 87% for England, however, only corresponding to about 490 average monthly searches.

We not only looked at the highest average monthly searches per country but also we looked at the highest average monthly search per keyword. The same process took place when looking at the counties and countries.