Designers and retailers across India are meeting the skyrocketing demand for cruelty-free clothing and accessories, and PETA India is recognizing the best of the best with its Vegan Fashion Awards 2021 this World Vegan Month (November).

• Best Vegan Fashion Style Icon: Actor and supermodel Milind Soman encourages his fans to keep animal skins out of their wardrobes. “No leather, no silk, no wool,” he wrote on Instagram. “No pain caused to animals just to satisfy human vanity. If you care, this is the alternative.”

• Compassionate Business Award: Luxury footwear brand Empyrean Luxury made the kind decision to stop using animal skins and switch to all-vegan materials.

• Best Vegan Activewear: From Kunal Avanti and Sunny Leone, I Am Animal’s stylish sportswear is proudly vegan.

• Best Vegan Sneakers: Made from recycled plastic bottles and plastic bags, Thaely’s trainers are kind to the planet and

• Best Vegan Bags: The made-in-India, 100% vegan leather handbags by Qisa by Lavie were designed for today’s eco-conscious young shoppers.

• Best Vegan Wallets: Traditional Indian style meets modern animal-free materials in Zouk’s handmade wallets.

• Best Vegan Women’s Shoes: From juttis and sliders to heels and boots, Paio creates handcrafted, made-to-measure vegan leather footwear.

• Best Vegan Men’s Shoes: Monkstory offers both classic footwear and cutting-edge style, all in luxurious vegan leather.

• Best Vegan Silk: Vegan materials made by GBM Fabrics use TENCEL Luxe, a new fibre derived from renewable wood sources.

• Best Innovation in Textile: Bioleather’s tomato leather is unique, biodegradable, sustainable, and cruelty-free.

• Best Vegan Sarees: Shubam Sarees offers a wide range of beautiful vegan silk kanjivaram sarees, from the interior villages of Tamil Nadu.

• Best Vegan Cosmetics: Plum’s skin-care, make-up, hair-care, and other products are free of animal-derived ingredients and never tested on animals.

“The winners of PETA India’s awards prove that the future of Indian fashion is vegan,” says PETA India Senior Media and Celebrity Projects Coordinator Monica Chopra. “From silk-free sarees to leather-free bags, wallets, and shoes, it’s easier than ever to get a fashion-forward look that leaves cruelty to animals in the past.”

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.