What Makes a Shoe Truly Vegan? (It's Not Just the Leather)

If you're starting to think more carefully about what goes into the things you wear, shoes are one of those places where it gets surprisingly interesting. Most people's first instinct is to check for leather — and that's a great start. But a shoe is actually made of quite a few different parts, and leather is just one of the materials that can end up in it. Once you know what to look for, you'll never look at a shoe label quite the same way.

The good news: it's not complicated. You just need to know what the different parts of a shoe are, and where animal-derived materials tend to show up.

A shoe has three parts — check all of them

Think of any shoe as being made up of three distinct sections:

The upper

The outer shell — everything you see when you look at a shoe from the outside. This is the part people check first, and with good reason. Leather, suede, nubuck, shearling, wool: all animal-derived, all common in the upper. Synthetic alternatives have improved dramatically over the past decade, to the point where many are more durable and water-resistant than the animal versions. At NAE, we work with materials like Piñatex (made from pineapple leaf fibres), apple leather, cork, and OEKO-TEX certified microfibre — so the upper is always animal-free, but we've also worked hard to make sure it's genuinely interesting material, not just a plastic stand-in.

The lining and insole

The inside of the shoe — the part your foot actually touches. This is where animal products can quietly slip in unnoticed. Leather linings are common even in shoes that look entirely synthetic on the outside. Wool is another one to watch: it currently shares the same labelling symbol as cotton and polyester under EU rules, so it can be easy to miss. Our linings are made from OEKO-TEX certified microfibre throughout — hypoallergenic, produced without CO₂ emissions, and as a bonus, it helps prevent odour.

The outer sole

The bottom of the shoe. For most casual and everyday styles, this is rubber or synthetic rubber — entirely vegan. Where it gets trickier is in formal footwear, where leather soles are still used in some dress shoes as a traditional mark of quality. Our soles are made from natural or synthetic rubber or recycled materials — like the recycled tennis balls used in our Berlin and London Sneakers, or the recycled car tyre soles (which last forever) on our anatomical sandals. We like both because they're vegan and because giving discarded materials a second life as a shoe sole feels very right.

The parts that don't appear on the label

Here's where it gets less visible.

Glue

Every shoe is held together with adhesive, and historically those adhesives were made from animal collagen — boiled-down animal bones, hides, and connective tissue. This is less common in modern manufacturing, because synthetic adhesives are cheaper and easier to work with at scale. But many mainstream brands simply cannot tell you whether their adhesives are free from animal by-products, because that information sits at the manufacturing level rather than with the retailer. A brand that genuinely makes vegan shoes should be able to confirm their adhesives are synthetic. If they don't know, that's a useful answer in itself.

Dyes

Most shoes are coloured with synthetic dyes, but some brands use inks and dyes derived from animals. Carmine — a red pigment made from crushed cochineal insects — occasionally shows up in fashion. It's not common in footwear, but it exists. Again, a brand with full visibility over their supply chain can tell you. One without that visibility can't.

This is actually one of the reasons we think it matters where and how shoes are made, not just what they're made of. When you make shoes in your own certified workshops in Portugal, the way we do, you have a relationship with every supplier. You know what glue they're using. That kind of transparency is hard to fake — and hard to have if your supply chain spans six countries and five contractors.

How to read the symbols on a shoe label

In the EU, there are four standardised symbols that must appear on every shoe, covering the upper, the lining and insole, and the outer sole. They're small, but once you know them, they're easy to read:

The key thing is to check all three rows on the label, not just the first one. A shoe can show a diamond (synthetic) on the upper and a hide (leather) on the lining — and unless you look at all three, you might miss it. Also worth knowing: if one material makes up 80% or more of a section, only that material needs to be listed. So a lining that is mostly leather with a small synthetic component might not make that immediately obvious. When in doubt, ask.

What does "certified vegan" actually mean?

Some shoes carry third-party certification — the most recognised being the PETA Approved Vegan logo. To use it, brands have to confirm that every component in their products is vegan: the materials, the lining, the adhesives, the dyes. Certifications cost money — some are genuinely worth it, some less so. What matters is whether a brand can actually stand behind what they claim. At NAE, we verify that every material used in our shoes is vegan. Everything we use is checked and confirmed by us before it goes into production. That accountability is built into how we work.

A practical checklist for your next shoe shop

Whether you're in a shop or browsing online, here's what to look at:

• Upper: Look for textile or diamond symbols, or descriptions like 'synthetic', 'microfibre', 'vegan leather', or 'canvas'. A hide symbol means leather.
• Lining: Check this section of the label separately from the upper. Textile is usually fine, but if you want to rule out wool, a quick message to the brand will confirm it. Diamond/synthetic is always safe.
• Sole: For everyday shoes, rarely a concern. For formal styles, check whether it says leather sole or rubber.
• Glue and dyes: This won't appear on any label. For mainstream brands, you often simply can't know. For dedicated vegan brands, it should be documented — if a brand can't tell you, that's worth factoring in.
• Certification: Look for it on the product page, the box, or the brand's website. A brand that displays it has done the verification work — so you don't have to.

The short version

Leather-free doesn't automatically mean vegan. A shoe is made of layers — outer, inner, sole, adhesive — and animal-derived materials can appear in any of them. The brands worth trusting are the ones who have gone through every layer and can tell you exactly what's in there.

Once you start looking at shoes this way, you'll notice that genuine vegan footwear isn't just about removing leather. It's about a completely different way of thinking about how a shoe gets made — and what it's made of, all the way through.