The carnivore is back. Are vegan brands out?

The carnivore diet, beef tallow, sticks of butter and raw milk: when did animal products re-enter the zeitgeist? In a TikTok shared with her 11 million followers, influencer Nara Smith is seen adding beef tallow, an animal fat, to her homemade moisturiser recipe. Brands like Remnant Beauty and Béla Nektar, both of which incorporate beef tallow in their products, have seen sales grow 134 per cent and 400 per cent year-on-year in the last two years, respectively, per brand insights shared with Vogue Business. According to influencer marketing platform Traackr, mentions of “beef tallow skincare” are up 180 per cent this year over last, while mentions of “raw” and “unpasteurised” milk are up 59 per cent during the same period. Diets are also shifting. Consumers are now embracing meat and butter, with some eating steak up to twice a day. The carnivore diet is up 76.6 per cent year-on-year on Google, with monthly search volumes averaging 477,000; TikTok has seen an increase of 198 per cent, with average weekly views of 25.2 million, according to consumer trends platform Spate. The diet was initially popularised by ‘manosphere’ podcasters such as Andrew Huberman, but has since spread to online women’s wellness content. Consumer research company GWI found that interest in veganism is declining, dropping 29 per cent between 2021 and 2023, while a “flexitarian” approach has grown in popularity, up 11 per cent. Why are consumers pivoting to animal products? “The rise of simplicity, naturalism and conservatism is a result of consumers, on the one hand, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted about their personal and ethical choices, and on the other, increasingly distrusting institutions like modern medicine, the media and the government,” says Jessica Defino, beauty critic and author of The Review of Beauty Substack. As such, consumers are becoming increasingly sceptical of marketing products as “sustainable” or “vegan”, Defino adds. It’s not just influencers behind the trend; it has been popularised by alternative medicine advocates such as Gwyneth Paltrow, and even right-wing US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump’s newly appointed health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr — all of whom have met with widespread criticism. Kennedy, for instance, publicly claimed that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been suppressing foods like raw milk in consumer diets as a way to impede US health advancements. “The politicisation of food and ingredients is influencing the animal-based trend even more,” says Fiona Harkin, director of foresight at strategic foresight consultancy The Future Laboratory. “There’s a kind of brute masculinity that’s pervading our political social air right now that is embodied by red meat eating being seen as ‘patriotic’, for example.” There’s a connection here: the distrust in modern institutions leads to a desire for natural and unprocessed consumption, which leads to the pendulum swinging away from vegan alternatives. For beauty, will vegan brands wane as the animal sector grows given the burgeoning era of conservatism and a change in political agenda? And the rising rates of steak consumption leave questions for the leather industry, particularly around whether interest in alternative leather innovation (like plant-based leather or laboratory-grown leather) will fail to reach a peak. We examine the effects of the trend on beauty and fashion below. What does it mean for beauty brands? Regardless of the growing interest in animal-based products, there’s still a place for vegan beauty brands. In fact, the vegan cosmetics market is forecasted to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 6.3 per cent, increasing from a value of $16 billion in 2023 to $25.9 billion by the end of 2030, according to UK-based insights firm Persistence Market Research. For many consumers, veganism is an ideology, not a trend. “Vegan wellness has become synonymous with environmentalism, sustainability and cruelty-free lifestyles. Many consumers are motivated by concerns about the environmental impact of animal agriculture and welfare. These concerns are likely to remain strong, even as interest in animal products grows,” says Dr Nowell Solish, dermatologist at skincare brand Indeed Labs. He also reinforces the following and integration of veganism for health reasons. Some vegan brands say they aren’t phased by the growing animal product trend, nor the potentially political waters on the horizon, given that their business purposes are rooted in core ideologies. “While I see the trends on social media, I haven’t witnessed any mass-market shifts. The demand for vegan alternatives is still present,” says Michael Marquis, CEO of personal care brand Raw Sugar Living. Neither does cosmetics company Lush, whose ethics director Hilary Jones says: “Our customers come to us knowing that we’re a vegan brand who cares about sustainability and preserving the health of our planet.” Yet, some experts believe vegan brands are now faced with an opportunity. “The wellness and beauty world is experiencing a massive shift and the animal product trend highlights some important conversations about processing and naturalness. However, they shouldn’t be seen as a complete rejection of vegan wellness,” says nutritionist Rosie Millen. Instead, the vegan sector will likely evolve. Both Millen and aesthetician Corina Mihalache believe that brands will be motivated to focus on efficacy and transparency given the rise of consumer distrust — and among those that thrive are the brands able to back up products with verified claims. “It challenges us to educate and innovate,” says Britany LeBlanc, CEO of skincare brand Herbivore Botanicals, who also agrees that the vegan beauty sector has a chance to weed out false claims with verified ingredients and formulas. For LeBlanc, that’s the need to introduce plant-based options developed using science to minimise scrutiny and ingredient innovations like bioidentical ingredients that preserve the earth’s resources. As for vegan brands navigating the tricky political waters, Lisa Payne, head of beauty at global trends intelligence firm Stylus, says “a soft and holistic strategy led by education will be key.” For Payne, we’re entering an era with an increased focus on non-vegan alternatives, but vegan brands should not shift their strategies to accommodate the growing societal noise. “The brands already using animal ingredients should actively promote its benefits [like beef tallow’s ultra-moisturising abilities], but as with any animal-based products, marketing animal welfare is essential.” Otherwise, for consumers purchasing across vegan and animal-based beauty products, experts say this shopping behaviour will likely remain. “We’re moving towards a more nuanced understanding of beauty and wellness as balance and personalisation become key for optimal skin health,” says Mihalache. This sector of consumers will shop — whether it be for vegan or animal-derived products — based on what gives them the best results. “What’s emerging is a move away from pure labelling and towards results-driven products, wherever they come from,” she adds. What does it mean for vegan fashion? Like with beauty, consumers have become disillusioned with vegan fashion alternatives. Concerns over heavy processing have grown (similar to plant-based meat alternatives) and consumers are increasingly aware of the large role plastic plays in vegan leather alternatives. Now, shoppers are shifting back to animal leather (the environmentally conscious consumer may opt for secondhand leather). “A lot of people still think real leather is better,” says content creator and author Andrea Cheong, who also hosts Kering’s ‘Fashion Our Future’ podcast to educate consumers on how to detect high-quality fashion. Part of it comes down to the scalability of these materials: many haven’t reached industrial-level useability and the price point is still quite high. “Consumers’ perceptions of animal leather have actually improved because all of the alternatives have proved themselves to not be of value, especially not of long-term value when you factor in durability and the fact nobody knows how they’re going to wear down,” she says. In 2024, the luxury leather goods market is worth $81.9 billion, according to Euromonitor, and is forecasted to reach $96.4 billion by 2026. Euromonitor’s Voice of the Industry survey shows that less than half (46 per cent) of those working across apparel and footwear say their employers plan to introduce vegan and vegetarian claims in the next five years, with only 15 per cent planning to launch products with biodynamic or regenerative farming claims. With this shift towards traditional and trustworthy materials, is there still space for innovation? Investors in plant-based leather alternatives aren’t too concerned. “We aren’t surprised to see this shift in the market and expected that the animal products industry would work to claw back customers after a recent boom in alternative materials,” says Tess Krasne, investor at Alante Capital, which specialises in sustainable innovation. “As investors in innovation, we recognise this push and pull as a part of a natural cycle for progress in any industry.” “The alternative leather space serves a comparatively small segment of the leather market,” adds Alante Capital founder and managing partner Karla Mora. “To win over the broader leather consumer, it would need to outcompete on quality, price and style. When that happens, we do expect it to take off regardless of a trend towards animal products.” Plant-based leather isn’t the only alternative solution that may be impacted. There’s growing interest in laboratory-grown leather startups, which replicate animal skin on a cellular level without harming any species. The initial response to lab-grown meat has been quite negative as consumers see it as unnatural, but lab-grown diamonds have taken off because of considerably cheaper prices. So where does laboratory-grown leather sit? “People see things differently in terms of what they’re eating versus what they’re wearing because it’s less intrusive,” says Faircraft founder Haïkel Balti, who has a background in mechanical engineering and materials science. Faircraft raised €15.8 million in series A funding in November. “In terms of the food, we’re seeing on a daily basis the health effects of highly processed foods; but with materials, we’ve used processed materials for a long time. It’s common to mix materials for different functions. Even a white cotton T-shirt is highly processed,” says Balti. Conventional leather, while seen as a traditional material, is processed with chemicals and even plastic coatings. Whether lab-grown leather will be seen as offputtingly ‘unnatural’ in the current cultural climate remains to be seen, but Balti expects the Asian market to be particularly receptive to the innovation of lab-grown leather, more so than the West. Unlike lab-grown diamonds, Balti says, lab-grown leather will likely be more expensive per square metre (because conventional leather is already mass-produced and consumption is already high). This may limit its scalability regardless of consumer perception. Ioanna Topouzoglou, founder of Peta-approved vegan handbag brand Mashu, who is vegan herself, says she would be willing to explore lab-grown leather alternatives from an ethical point of view, but that she wouldn’t be sure how to market the material given that it’s not technically vegan. Mashu launched in 2017, and has experimented with plant-based leather alternatives including pineapple-based Piñatex, corn and recycled polyester leather alternative Bioveg, apple leather Uppeal and olive leather Oleatex. Despite the anti-vegan sentiment, the brand hasn’t seen a negative impact directly on its business. “When we started the brand, a lot of people were telling me not to market it as vegan because that would alienate consumers,” says Topouzoglou, adding that she went against this advice because she wanted consumers to know the brand’s values. “These animal product trends don’t alienate our current customer, or change our customer-acquisition strategy. But it does make us feel like we need to make our vegan brand pillar more visible, to try and contribute to the counterargument of trends like these,” adds Katie Karayiannis, founder of brand consultancy Vert Communications, which leads Mashu’s marketing strategy. “Our strategy is to make the fact that Mashu is vegan even louder among the wave of animal product hype.” Ultimately, it’s about empowering consumers to stick to their values despite the environment of disillusionment and fear. “We’ve put so much of the blame for climate change on big industries — which is true, but it’s sort of removed the responsibility on the consumer. People are thinking, ‘Well, what can I do? They’re just going to keep producing this, so even if I stop buying the product it won’t make a difference,’” says Topouzoglou. “There’s a lot of information out there that is making consumers confused, but if we have the say with our money it does make a real difference.” Comments, questions or feedback? 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