Chinese Pigs Feed a Western Fashion Boom - NYTimes.com: "Chinese Pigs Feed a Western Fashion Boom
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: December 24, 2000"
Americans are buying animal hides like Hell's Angels. In the first nine months of this year, leather clothing sales were up 71 percent, according to the Leather Apparel Association. Stores from Gucci to Wal-Mart are chock-a-block with skins -- and not just bomber jackets. The Limited's Express has pink and gold metallic leather halter tops, and Ralph Lauren has designed a leather five-pocket jean in red.
What has marked this holiday season more than the color and abundance of leather goods, however, are the incredible shrinking prices. A decade ago, leather was predominantly a luxury product, purchased at boutiques. Today, Old Navy has seamed A-line skirts in olive leather on sale at $39.99. Kmart has stadium jackets at $59.99. Target, the giant discounter, entered the leather market this year with a highly promoted black zip-up coat for $109.99.
In Haining, China, a coastal city about 100 miles south of Shanghai, Zhou Zhanghe, a leather wholesaler, has a theory on why America is suddenly awash with inexpensive leather. ''There are a lot of pigs in China,'' he said, chatting in his narrow shop stacked to the ceiling with tanned hides.
Pigs, of course, are not entirely responsible for transforming leather into the mass-market fabric that it is today. There are other important factors, among them an increase in meat consumption in the third world, easing of government labeling guidelines, and the wholesale movement of leather clothing manufacturing into the Far East, where the highly labor-intensive industry can buy workers' time for pennies on the dollar.
Retail prices in the United States are also being depressed because demand, while strong, has nevertheless fallen short of merchants' expectations.
A year ago, Gap Inc.'s ''Everyone in Leather'' promotional campaign, featuring sexy but wholesome youths in T-shirts and leather pants, was so successful that sales clerks in Manhattan reported women bursting into tears when stores ran out of stock.
Gap's foray was key to sparking the mass-market craze for leather, but also created too much of a hot thing as everyone jumped on the bandwagon. This year, Gap itself -- admitting it overordered -- slashed prices on its multicolor leather goods well before Christmas. Leather is being marked down substantially by department store and other speciality stores, too. Further cuts will probably come after Christmas.
''Put it this way,'' said Jack Dougherty, a Gap company spokesman. ''Pretty much everyone who wants to be in leather is there already.''
But Chinese pigs do figure in to perhaps the biggest contributor to lower leather prices: new technologies that can metamorphose cheap animal hides -- scratched cow, pocked sheep or porous pig -- into supple leather.
''The chief advantage of technology is that it improves finishes, making them softer and softer, so that leather that was only good for shoes is now pliable for clothing,'' explained Joel Waller, chief executive of Wilsons the Leather Experts, the leading American retailer of leather.
''The tannery people are magicians,'' said Hans Nutzhorn, who exports Chinese-made leather garments to Europe. ''They can do anything with the right chemicals.''
Increasingly sophisticated stamping and printing technology also allows tanneries to make low-quality skin from farm animals look like scaly snakeskin or crocodile -- or whatever manufacturers want. Wilsons, for example, used pig skin for its fall line of ''python'' blazers.
''As an extreme example, I can take a piece of leather and make it look like corduroy or over-dyed denim, and it is very economical,'' Mr. Waller said.
Very, very economical. Skins can be split into three layers, according to Mr. Zhou, and tanneries can now treat even the cheapest, innermost layer to give it a finish close enough to fine cowhide to fool most untutored buyers.
The inner layer of pig -- the ''split-grain'' leather once reserved for shoe sole inserts -- is now a staple for outerwear. It can cost as little as 30 cents a square foot, or a little more than $10 for enough to make a man's jacket. Skins account for roughly 70 percent of the cost of leather goods, according to Mr. Waller and other industry experts.
Previously, the Federal Trade Commission allowed only the most durable outer layer -- called top grain -- to be labeled leather in America, but it waived those rules in 1996.
Of course, most consumers, thrilled to get ostrich print boots at bargain prices, probably do not care if they are really wearing the inner hide of pig, the rest of which most likely ended up in a string of Chinese sausage. But even if they did, there is not much they could learn.
Under the F.T.C's labeling guidelines, anything made of animal hide -- including, say, gopher hide or rat hide -- can be labeled ''genuine leather,'' according to Susan Arthur, a staff lawyer who headed up the last review of the guidelines in 1996. That might give a shopper pause over the really inexpensive items.
The Commerce Department has regulations banning the import of skins from endangered species and house cats and dogs; the law rules banning the use of domestic mammals became law only last month, inspired, in part, by revelations in 1998 that cat and dog fur were being used on coats sold, unknowingly, by Burlington Coat Factory.
The government's main aim in regulating labels is to prevent consumer fraud. When leather has been embossed to look like alligator, for example, the label has to say as much.
However, even within these bounds there is ample room for interpretation. Lambskin has historically been prized as a fine quality leather, but much of what comes out of China labeled as such is actually a bit longer in the tooth. The United States tariff code, which defines calves by size, makes no distinction between the skin of a lamb or an adult sheep; both can legally be called lambskin.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has tried to create consumer outrage about the growth of leather imports from countries like China, where they say animals are treated particularly inhumanely.
This fall the animal rights organization began a campaign against Express. And in April, PETA was able to convince Gap to stop buying its animal hides from China and India by showing them videos of cows as well as dogs being skinned alive. Gap now manufactures clothing in China, but says it gets most of its hides from tanneries in Italy. On Thanksgiving, PETA started a television ad campaign called ''Cows are Cool,'' meant to raise awareness of all animal cruelty related to leather.
Perhaps out of concern that a backlash could emerge if enough consumers learned the source of their leather, many of the large chain retailers and manufacturers of leather products tend to offer more rather than less information.
The Gap says that the ''vast majority'' of its leather products are made from cow -- though shoppers have to guess themselves, because all of its products are labeled simply ''genuine leather.'' Kmart's low-priced stadium jacket is a pig product, but its label, too, reads leather. Wilson's says that its sales clerks have been schooled in the different types of skin in each garment, but customers must ask if they want to find out.
Though retailers may be fuzzy about the origins of the skins they sell, the Chinese are more than willing to brag about having found a new export market for a product previously used only as a food (boiled, roasted or fried).
''If it's cheap and it comes from China, then it's probably pigskin,'' said Zhang Xuhua, a China Leather Industry Association official.
Leather clothing imports from China have almost tripled since 1992, according to the Commerce Department, accounting for roughly two-thirds of imported leather. Imported leather goods account for more than 95 percent of the entire American leather apparel market.
According to the Chinese trade group, about half of the leather garments China ships to the United States are made of pigskin. Another third are made of Chinese sheepskin, and most of the rest are cowhide imported from the United States or South America and tanned in China.
The lowest-quality cowhides, scratched by brushes or pocked with insect bites, are buffed and made into jackets with the ''distressed'' look especially popular in the West.
Mike Woo, a young salesman at the Haining Import and Export Corporation, said he sold lots of pigskin garments labeled simply as leather to Wilson's -- but that American discount chains tend to buy their jackets for even less.
''Kmart and Wal-Mart go further inland to look for the cheapest labor and the cheapest leather,'' he said. ''We can't even do it that cheap.''
Photos: No longer the luxury it was even 10 years ago, leather apparel is now sold at stores in Manhattan's garment district and nationwide at prices not much higher than those for clothes made of wool and other fabrics. (Librado Romero/The New York Times); Zhou Zhanghe, a leather wholesaler in Haining, China, sells tanned hides that are made into clothes sold by retailers like Kmart and Gap. (Craig S. Smith/The New York Times)(pg. 22) Graph: ''Fashion Craze'' In the first nine months of this year, leather clothing sales were up 71 percent over the same period last year. Graph tracks leather clothing sales since 1995. (Source: Leather Apparel Association)(pg. 22)
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