As fashion materials grow ever more obscure, with ostriches, caimans and stingrays finding new life as shoes and handbags, it’s nice to see a shout-out to the humble fish. Not only is fish skin — called “sea leather” by its promoters — something new, it’s also eco-friendly, saved as it is from trash bins and landfills, and looks a lot like snakeskin. But that doesn’t necessarily make designers want to work with it. As alice + olivia’s Stacey Bendet told the New York Post, “They smell. Gross!” Earth Pledge claims otherwise, saying, it “does not smell fishy …” adding, “It happens to be very beautiful.”
