How to Read a Clothing Label

What the label is legally required to say

In the UK, textile products must carry the fibre composition by weight, using the standard fibre names, and that information has to be accurate. This is the part of the label you can rely on. If it says 80 per cent cotton and 20 per cent polyester, that is a legal statement rather than a marketing one.

Two further rules are worth committing to memory. First, where a product contains non-textile parts of animal origin, the label must indicate it, and the standard wording is a phrase along the lines of "contains non-textile parts of animal origin". That phrase does a great deal of quiet work: it is how horn buttons, bone toggles and leather trims are meant to be declared. Second, footwear sold in the UK must carry pictograms showing the material of the upper, of the lining and insole, and of the outsole.

Those footwear pictograms are the most useful thing on a shoe box and almost nobody reads them. There are four material symbols: a stretched hide shape for leather, the same hide shape with a diamond for coated leather, a woven lattice for textile, and a plain diamond for other materials. A boot showing the lattice or the diamond in all three positions contains no leather. That is a legal declaration rather than a claim, and it works even when the brand says nothing at all.

The words that quietly mean animal

Most animal materials on labels do not use the word "animal". They use a trade name, which is why a shopper can read a tag carefully and still get it wrong.

• Shearling. A sheepskin with the wool still attached. Always an animal, unless the tag says faux shearling.
• Mohair, alpaca, angora, cashmere, camel hair, merino. All animal hair. Angora comes from rabbits.
• Calfskin, kidskin, lambskin, goatskin, pigskin. Leather, named for the animal.
• Nubuck and suede. Both are leather with a raised surface. Nubuck is sanded outer hide, suede is the inner split. Neither word warns you.
• Patent. Ambiguous on its own. Patent leather is leather with a high-gloss coating, and patent finishes also exist on polyurethane, so check the composition rather than the adjective.
• Napa, saffiano, pebbled, full-grain, top-grain, corrected-grain, bonded. All leather descriptors.
• Fur trim, real fur, coney, rex, raccoon dog, fox. Mislabelling of real fur as faux has been a recurring problem in the market. On a hooded coat, check the base of the hairs: fur grows from skin, faux fur is woven into a fabric backing.
• Down, feather, plume. Bird, usually duck or goose.
• Silk, habotai, charmeuse, dupion. Produced by silkworms.
• Mother-of-pearl, shell, nacre, horn, bone. Animal, and buttons are where they hide most often. Corozo, by contrast, is a palm nut and entirely plant based.
• Suede-look, leather-look, leather-effect. These usually indicate a synthetic, but the word "look" is doing the work, so verify against the composition.

The words that sound animal but usually are not

• Fleece and sherpa. Almost always polyester, despite both names.
• Leatherette, pleather, vegan suede, microsuede, Ultrasuede. Synthetic.
• Bamboo viscose. A regenerated cellulose fibre, plant based. Thought’s printed bamboo viscose scarf at £28 is a good example of a label that simply tells you what it is, though Thought sells wool elsewhere in its range, which is why the brand now carries our animal-materials tag. Viscose is chemically processed cellulose, so it is plant derived rather than unprocessed, and a brand naming the fibre accurately has already made your job easier.
• Wool-blend look, cashmere-touch, silky. Marketing adjectives rather than fibre names. The composition line is the only place to check. Will’s Vegan Store, for example, sells coats described with the word "wool" whose actual composition is cotton and recycled polyester.

What "vegan" on a tag does and does not guarantee

There is no legal definition of "vegan" for clothing in the UK. A brand can print the word on a swing tag without external scrutiny. That does not make every such tag dishonest. It makes it a claim rather than a verified fact.

Third-party marks sit a level above. PETA-Approved Vegan and the Vegan Society Trademark both require an application against published criteria, which is meaningfully better than self-declaration. Both rest substantially on brand declarations about the supply chain rather than on testing of every component, so treat them as a strong signal rather than a guarantee. NAE Vegan Shoes carries PETA-Approved Vegan. Will’s Vegan Store carries no verified third-party mark and instead publishes a material table for every product, which is a different strategy with different strengths.

What "vegan" does not tell you at all:

• Whether the glue is animal derived. Adhesives are rarely covered by fibre labelling and are the most common hidden input in footwear.
• Whether the dyes or finishes used animal-derived inputs such as lanolin.
• Anything about wages, hours or factory conditions.
• Anything about carbon, water or chemistry. This is why our own standard treats sustainability as a completely separate badge with its own rubric, rather than as a bonus point on the vegan score.

Our standard applies two gates first, on any animal-derived material in the current range and on animal testing; a brand that fails either carries our animal-materials tag and is listed after the rest. Every brand is scored out of 100. Eighty-five points plus a completed evidence audit earns the Good badge. No brand holds it yet, because no audit is finished. A label cannot do that work for you, but it can tell you which brands are worth the question.

Four questions worth emailing a brand

• What is the full composition of the upper, the lining and the backing textile, in percentages.
• Is the adhesive animal free, and can you confirm that with your factory.
• What are the buttons, toggles and trims made from.
• Is there a dated material or impact document I can read.

A brand that answers all four in one reply has a supply chain it can see. A brand that sends back a paragraph about its values has told you something as well.