In recent years, there's been a growing appetite for non-leather footwear, and at first we responded to this demand by offering vegan alternatives to some of our most popular styles. We don't actually use leather for many uppers (the top parts of the shoes), so our vegan option generally involves switching the traditional suede leather sole to a non-leather alternative. Nowadays, you can turn almost any shoe across our International Dance Shoes collection vegan and for those shoes that are displayed with a leather upper, we would then use a non-leather alternative - simple!
The level of development and the pace of advances in the space of animal leather alternatives in the footwear materials sector has been incredible to watch over the last couple of years. A few years ago, an alternative to leather tended to be quite plastic in look, packed full of chemicals, and developers weren't able to replicate the natural grains, the supple feel, nor the durability of real leather. Nowadays, there are some incredible alternatives, even some really high quality materials out there made from grape and mushroom! It'll be a few years yet before these kind of non-animal leathers are accessible to us both from a performance perspective and to work within our price range, but we're really excited to see how this sector develops over the coming years.
So, non-leathers are improving at an incredible rate! And it seems to be changing for the better at a time when sourcing consistently high quality genuine leather is becoming more challenging (and expensive!). We've mainly worked with black leather over the years - where shoes are displayed as Black Calf - and shoes in Black Calf continue to be immensely popular (like our Rumba for Men's Latin, and Contra for Men's Ballroom and teaching). Whilst it remains important at this time to offer leather shoes, we do need to keep our eyes on alternatives. This is for reasons including; aiming to maintain reasonable selling prices for dancers, helping us to reduce waste in our factory, and helping us use more efficient materials that allow us to become more productive.
Introducing: NotCalf!
Some of our non-leather but leather-like fabrics have been typically described as simply 'Black', 'Beige' or 'White' but we've decided to make things a bit clearer between what is and what isn't real leather: you'll still see Black Calf for the leather shoes, but you'll now notice colours including 'Black NotCalf', 'Beige NotCalf' and 'White NotCalf' - NotCalf is our new name to describe materials that are leather like - but aren't real leather! You'll also see 'Gold NotCalf' and 'Silver NotCalf' too.
We wanted a reference that is simple, very clear and to the point, and it's pretty memorable too!
But not only did we want something punchy and fun: we wanted something that will take into account the rapid advancements in this world. The compositions of these fabrics are wide ranging and evolving: what they're made up of, what sort of base, how they're made etc. so we didn't want to commit to a reference based on the composition of a material right now when we may well find something even better in the near future.
We're always seeking the absolute best in all of the materials and components that we use. For leather alternatives this is based on not just the look and feel, but importantly performance and durability. In addition to the rapidly improving developments - there is less waste with these fabrics. They're more consistent and unlike with leather, our team isn't cutting around blemishes or other cuts within skins. Often, parts of skins are wasted because it is a natural product and it isn't perfect - and reducing waste is one of many things us as manufacturers need to build our goals around.
This page on our website is something that we want to keep updated when we do make tweaks and changes to our supply and to use as an area where we can develop sections that give even more information over time about compositions of materials and why we choose them.
Ordering NotCalf shoes
Look out for the product names firstly! Anything that is leather (only Black) will be displayed as Black Calf but all other materials that are leather-like in look, will now be displayed as either Black NotCalf, Beige NotCalf, White NotCalf, Gold NotCalf or SilverCalf (and more colours will likely be added over time). These items will come as standard using a non-leather for the upper but will still have the traditional suede leather sole so if you want to make the shoes fully non-leather, select the option of a Vegan sole in the Sole Options dropdown when selecting size, heel, fit etc.
For anything with a Vegan sole, please note that there are no extra charges like the other sole options, but they are considered Bespoke and are thus non-returnable/non-refundable. Please, therefore be sure of your size, fit and heel preferences when ordering. Our team are always happy to help advise you on your size and for more information on sizing and the fittings we offer, click here.