Vegan fashion: Brazilian brand Insecta Shoes wants to take over EU and North America

It all started in 2014 at Urban Vintagers, a secondhand store in the city of Porto Alegre, in the southern tip of Brazil. Pam Magpali, then CEO of the now extinct eco-friendly shoe label MAG-P Shoes, couldn’t help but notice the pile of clothes that the store’s owner, Barbara Mattivy, had put aside for repair. She fell in love with the prints and asked Mattivy to let her use the fabrics to make shoes instead. Today, the duo is behind Insecta Shoes, a rising vegan footwear label which earned 2.8 million reais (approximately 700,000 US dollars or 55,000 pounds) in 2018 and expects a 30 percent growth in 2019.