Meet the Founder of Immaculate Vegan, Annick Ireland

A decade ago, shopping destinations like Net-A-Porter and MyWardrobe were the only places on the internet where fashionistas wanted to hang out. Carefully curated, projecting a put-together yet creative image of the personal style we all dreamed of, those fashion havens were a source of inspiration as well as shopping destinations. The only issue: very few items on those sites were ever vegan or ethically made. As a new vegan, I was increasingly frustrated when perusing these websites. "What if we had something like this," I daydreamed, "only vegan?"

By Sascha Camilli: writer, speaker, activist, and vegan fashion expert. 

Enter Immaculate Vegan. It was certainly not the first digital vegan marketplace in the world - but it had something no cruelty-free fashion retailers before it had achieved. My first time on the site, my mind was blown. Here was the elevated style destination that looked every bit as chic as Net-A-Porter – and everything on the site was vegan. I felt like all vegan fashionistas' prayers had been answered. And it was all thanks to the woman behind the venture, Annick Ireland.

A former chief marketing officer at a global events business, Ireland spent two decades working on marketing teams within events and publishing businesses. As many other vegans, her journey to compassionate living began...with a dog. "I had been a pescatarian for a while, but in 2014 I adopted a greyhound from the Retired Greyhound Trust – a lovely girl we called Tippi – and that enabled me to make the link between the pets we love and all animals. Connecting with my dog and seeing how she reacted to situations (many of which scared the living daylights out of her) helped me develop an empathy with animals I hadn’t really had before, and imagine how they might experience the world – and want to make it as trauma-free as possible. I was also pretty convinced about the health and environmental benefits of going vegan, but they were just the icing on the cake for me."

Surprisingly, Ireland's goal wasn't to start an online shopping destination - but just to make vegan fashion easier to find. "I actually found switching to vegan food really easy - fashion was harder! After a lot of time spent researching vegan brands on the internet and social media, I discovered that there were a whole bunch of fashion-forward vegan brands out there – but they were really difficult to find. So I started Immaculate Vegan as an Instagram blog in order to curate and share the very best vegan fashion I could find, to help others looking for ethical and sustainable alternatives that were also beautiful, well made and high in quality. I wanted to elevate the profile of vegan fashion and show people that you can absolutely be vegan and be stylish too! Developing this into a retail platform was a natural next step."

Today's abundance of sustainably minded brands comes as no surprise to Ireland. "We’ve already seen a real revolution taking place in plant-based eating, fuelled by ever-increasing concerns about the environment, animal welfare and human health. Vegan fashion and lifestyle is poised to be the next revolution, but it’s actually already begun. The global vegan women’s fashion market size is anticipated to reach USD 1,095.6 billion by 2027, with an average annual growth rate of 13.6% – that’s outpacing vegan food growth. In order to meet that growing demand, we’re seeing exciting new brands launching all the time, showcasing collections that make use of innovative vegan alternatives to leather, wool, silk, fur, down and other animal products – from footwear, bags and accessories to clothing and homeware."

Annick Ireland with Immaculate Vegan co-founder Simon Bell

And Immaculate Vegan is instrumental in doing just that. But has the retail platform's journey always been plain sailing? Far from it, says Ireland. "There are so many challenges to running a business, from making sure we have the technology to sell multiple brands from around the world, to customers around the world, with different shipping, and cross border taxes; to raising our first round of investment. I don’t think it’s one thing – it’s juggling all these things. But the thing that has helped me the most is having a brilliant team to support me. And lots of brilliant brands at Immaculate Vegan whose wonderful stories we get to tell."

Speaking of the brands, does Ireland have any favourites? It's a tough one, but in the end she does make some selections. "I LOVE my WEEK/END Cactus Leather Crossbody by FRIDA ROME, it’s our bestseller. I've had it for four years and I get comments about how gorgeous it is all the time! I also adore Swiss shoe

brand BIKKOU who are quite new to the site, they really challenge stereotypes about what a vegan shoe brand looks like; and for clothing I love Baukjen, their quality is excellent. and they’re my go-to for basics and denim. Plus for men’s accessories (and gifting), Watson & Wolfe is brilliant, their vegan leather is just superb."

What does a typical day look like for Ireland? She echoes what many other founders say – that no two days are the same. "It’s always busy and diverse! I do all the marketing, so it’s often filled with creating all our different marketing emails for different audiences and regions around the world, and creating our social media content and managing our social platforms.But as a small business there’s always lots of different things throughout the day – a team catch up, a strategy meeting, budget management and sales forecasting, a catch up with our digital agency, doing an interview or podcast, researching new brands we want to add and new product categories we want to develop, planning the next set of articles for our online magazine, talking to a potential investor – the list is endless!"

And the future looks bright for Immaculate Vegan: "We started with vegan women’s shoes and bags, so this is the area we are strongest in, but we’re now really expanding our clothing categories too. We will also grow our men’s offering, which there’s a lot of demand for, and we plan to launch Immaculate Pets and Immaculate Kids too." Big plans – and Ireland only plans to expand. "Ultimately we want to make sure we have a strong offering in every key category in every region around the world, so that customers have a great choice of vegan and sustainable products that they can also buy locally."

Exciting things to come – watch this space. 

By Sascha Camilli

About Sascha

Sascha Camilli is a vegan fashion writer, speaker and activist. Her book Vegan Style is out now on Murdoch Books. For more about Sascha, you can read our interview with her or read her newsletter Kind of Wild. You can also follow her on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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