This has happened more than once: a company makes public pronouncements about leaving leather behind it and draws opprobrium from people inside the industry's active and loud but limited bubble. If it later changes its mind, perhaps after realising that the financial benefits of bringing leather products to market outweigh the extra complications involved in sourcing and using the material, the bubble's reaction can include schadenfreude and even a tiny bit of triumphalism. We are only human and these reactions are the result of provocation and frustration at an animus against leather that feeds on falsehoods. Nevertheless, the recent situation involving automotive company Polestar and its attitude to leather proves that there is a better way. Polestar's name has been around since the 1990s, but it was only in 2017 that owners Volvo and Chinese group Ceely Motors decided to launch it formally as a standalone brand devoted to electric vehicles. Its first car, the now discontinued Polestar 1, went into production in 2019, with the Polestar 2 following in 2020. It generated a high level of publicity by emphasising that it was using "vegan WeaveTech upholstery" in the interior of these vehicles instead of leather. The Polestar 2 even won 'Best of the Best' in product design in the 2021 edition of the prestigious Red Dot Awards. Head of design, Maximilian Missoni, said Polestar was determined to challenge all the "old notions of what premium means in the car industry" and it was clear in the early days that he viewed a preference for plastic in the seat covers as part of that.
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