Best vegan leather bags: 7 checked, 1 to skip

Our pick is Matt & Nat’s Garni tote, $120 on sale when we read it, because its page says exactly what it is: a 100% polyurethane outer and a lining made from recycled plastic bottles. For less plastic, take Svala’s Simma Tote in Mirum. Skip Baggu’s recycled leather bags, which are 70% leather fibers.

The Federal Trade Commission keeps a set of guides for leather and imitation leather goods, and its first paragraph names ladies’ handbags, shoulder bags and purses. One section deals with leather that has been ground, shredded or bonded back together. A material like that should not be represented as leather, and where it looks like leather the guides ask for a disclosure, such as the percentage of leather fibers and of everything else in it. So a percentage printed next to the word recycled is a count of how much of the bag is hide. Baggu’s tag says 70%, and its own page explains that its recycled leather starts as genuine leather scraps.

Every other bag on the list is made without animal skin, going by what its maker has put in writing. That is not the same thing as plastic-free, and only one of them comes close. Our look at how long vegan leather lasts covers what to expect from the polyurethane ones as they age.

The seven at a glance

Bag	Price when read	What the outer is	What the vegan claim rests on	Skip it if
Matt & Nat Garni Tote (Forum)	$120 on sale, $160 list	100% polyurethane	Matt & Nat: company completely vegan	Recycled content is your reason to buy
Svala Simma Tote, tan Mirum	$295	Mirum, sold as zero plastic	Svala’s material description	You need a zip
JW PEI Cleo Box Shape Top Handle Bag	$89	Vegan leather, material not named	JW PEI: vegan materials	You want to know what it is made of
Angela Roi Cacta Small Tote	$225	Cactus blended with ecoPU	PETA certification, brand-wide	You want an adjustable strap
Melie Bianco Johanna Large	$150	Recycled vegan leather, part recycled	Melie Bianco’s animal welfare policy	You expect 100% recycled
Telfar Medium Shopping Bag	$202	50% polyurethane, 50% polyester	The materials tab; the word vegan never appears	You shop Telfar by the material picker
Baggu Recycled Leather Shoulder Bag	$190	70% recycled leather fibers	Not vegan: genuine leather scraps	Always

Seven bags, read from the makers’ own pages

Prices come from each maker’s US store when we read them in November 2026. Prices and stock move, sale prices fastest of all. Nothing below says how a bag feels on the shoulder after a year, because no maker page can tell you that and we did not carry these around to find out.

Matt & Nat Garni Tote (Forum)

Garni is the bag here that answers the material question in a single line. Matt & Nat’s US page says the outer body of its Forum collection is 100% polyurethane, that the interior lining is made from 100% recycled plastic bottles, and that the company is “completely vegan and cruelty-free”. It is a zip-top tote with a magnetic snap pocket on the front that fits a 13-inch laptop, $160 at full price and $120 on sale when we read it.

Polyurethane is named here, so you know what you are buying and how to clean it, which is why Garni is our pick.

Read the badges with the details underneath them, though. The badge row says “Made from recycled materials” and a banner lower down says 100% sustainable materials, while the details put the recycled content in the lining and give no recycled share for the polyurethane outer. If recycled content is the reason you are buying, the outer is not where it lives. The page also shows both a 30-day return and 30-day exchanges, so read the policy before you order a sale color.

Svala Simma Tote, tan Mirum

If plastic in the material itself is what you are trying to avoid, this is the one to look at. Svala makes the outer from Mirum, which it describes as a plant-based material made by NFW with zero plastic, from natural rubber, plant oils and cork, and as a 100% USDA Certified Biobased Product. The tote fits a 13-inch MacBook and costs $295.

The lining is another matter. Svala lines the Simma with recycled polyester made from plastic bottles, combined with organic cotton, so the outer is plastic-free by the maker’s account and the bag as a whole is not. It closes with a hidden magnet rather than a zip. On a crowded train, that matters more than the cork.

JW PEI Cleo Box Shape Top Handle Bag

$89 buys a small, quilted, boxy top-handle bag with a detachable crossbody strap, and JW PEI lists both the main material and the lining as vegan leather. The brand describes itself as a Los Angeles label working with vegan materials.

What we could not find on any JW PEI page we read is what that vegan leather is made of. The product description calls it “black synthetic material”, which rules out hide and not much else.

The capacity note says it fits an iPhone 17 Pro Max, bare device. I appreciate the honesty. Leave the phone case at home, or buy a bigger bag. When we read it, the black was on pre-order with a restock date of November 16, and unused bags with tags could go back within 30 days, final sale excluded.

Angela Roi Cacta Small Tote

Angela Roi says its bags are made exclusively from non-animal materials and that it is certified by PETA. PETA’s vegan logo runs on signed paperwork. The brand fills in a statement of assurance and a questionnaire, and its manufacturers or suppliers sign statements of their own, which PETA reviews before it charges an annual fee. That is more than a brand vouching for itself, and the application page describes no product testing.

The Cacta is a slouchy pebble-textured tote, $225, weighing 0.5 lb. Angela Roi says its cactus was grown on an organic ranch in Mexico and then blended with the brand’s ecoPU, and that the bag is hand-crafted in Korea. The page gives no share for the cactus or the polyurethane. Cactus on the tag still means polyurethane in the bag, in a proportion this page does not print.

The strap is fixed in length and cannot be adjusted, and inside, the page lists a zipper pouch and nothing else. Shipping and domestic returns are free. Skip it if you want to set the strap length yourself.

Melie Bianco Johanna Large

The Johanna is a large woven hobo at $150, and its page says the material is 40% post-consumer recycled polyester and 18% post-consumer recycled vegan leather. Melie Bianco’s FAQ gives the recycled vegan leather collection as 40% post-consumer recycled polyester, 18% recycled PU, polyurethane, and 10% wood fiber, and says its regular vegan leather bags are polyurethane. By our arithmetic the recycled shares named there add up to 58%, and the plain polyurethane in the middle of that list has no number at all. “Recycled vegan leather” on the tag means partly recycled.

Melie Bianco’s animal welfare policy says it accepts no leather from cow, buffalo, sheep, goat, fish or pig, no animal hair and no real fur. Then there is the Emory, a $110 top-handle bag whose material line reads Recycled Vegan Leather and whose description says it is finished with a hand-knotted leather puller. It is probably loose copywriting for the same synthetic, and I would still email the brand before buying that one.

Returns are 30 days from the order date with tags attached, and you pay the return shipping.

Telfar Medium Shopping Bag

Telfar’s page for the black Medium Shopping Bag never uses the word vegan. It says the bag is made from faux leather with a twill lining, its Materials tab reads 50% polyurethane and 50% polyester, and the care instructions warn against strong detergents that can damage the PU surface, and against heat and long sun exposure. It is $202 and fits a laptop. For the gentle-cleaner routine Telfar describes, our step-by-step guide to cleaning vegan leather goes further.

The problem sits on the same page. Under the bag is a picker of materials, and Leather and Suede are on it, next to Plastic and Tyvek. Telfar’s Medium Carry Bag, the deeper version of the same tote, is $450 of aniline full-grain pebble leather, left unlined. The shape looks the same in a thumbnail. Buy the Shopping Bag by its name and its materials tab, never by the swatch.

Baggu Recycled Leather Shoulder Bag

Do not buy this one if you are shopping vegan. Baggu lists the Recycled Leather Shoulder Bag at $190, made of 70% recycled leather fibers, 9% recycled polyester and 21% water-based polyurethane. Its page on the material says the leather layer is made entirely of reclaimed leather fibers, taken from landfill-bound genuine leather scraps.

Whether hide that would otherwise be thrown away is acceptable is a question about where vegans draw the line, and no label settles it. Some hold that using leather that already exists harms no new animal. Others answer that any hide on your shoulder keeps the leather look in demand, and that the scraps come from an industry that still profits from them. Our piece on whether second-hand leather is vegan lays out both sides. The site’s line on this page is simple: it is leather, so it is not on a list of vegan bags.

What the tag can and cannot tell you

“Vegan leather” tells you there is no hide in the outer, and nothing about the plastic. Of the six bags that pass, only Matt & Nat and Telfar put a percentage on the polyurethane, and Melie Bianco gives one only for its recycled part.

A plant-based name describes one ingredient. Angela Roi’s cactus is blended with polyurethane, and the Mirum on Svala’s tote is sold as plastic-free while the lining under it is recycled polyester.

Recycled needs a noun after it before it means anything. At Melie Bianco, recycled vegan leather is a partly recycled synthetic, while Baggu’s recycled leather is leather.

With a certification, ask who signed what. PETA’s logo rests on statements of assurance from the brand and its suppliers. None of the seven pages we read names an outside lab check or says anything about the adhesive inside the bag.

How to check a bag yourself

Read the materials line, then the description, then the care instructions. Telfar’s composition sits in a tab and its PU shows up a second time in the care text, while Melie Bianco’s Emory description contradicts its own material line.

If a tag gives a percentage of leather fibers, it is a leather bag, however the rest of the sentence reads.

Check the exact model name against the material. A brand that sells a vegan tote can sell the same shape in hide, as Telfar does with the Shopping Bag and the Carry.

When the page is silent on glue or thread, ask by email before you buy, and keep the answer.

If you are weighing polyurethane against Mirum or the plant blends for your next bag, our guide to what vegan leather is made of is the next read.