I was lucky enough to sneak a peek at the best in ethical fashion yesterday at London Fashion Week, and I hereby report a surge in designer vegan shoes. As a shoe lover, I am so excited!

This week the special ethical section of the LFW exhibition, called ‘estethica’, is housing names such as Beyond Skin (amazing vegan shoes as worn by Natalie Portman – who incidentally is also launching her own designer vegan shoe range), Izzy Lane (Vegetarian Society approved shoes) and up-and-coming The Flying Cow (Italy’s equivalent of Beyond Skin).

To have such a great choice of cruelty-free shoes at the world famous London Fashion Week is indicative of a rise in compassionate consumerism. It also acknowledges the fact that animal-free footwear is, and always was, fashionable.

Why shouldn’t we buy leather goods? Leather is fur but without the hair, and millions of animals around the world are being slaughtered for their skins just so we can wear them on our feet. It’s cruel, and let’s be honest, leather smells like corpses. Synthetic and natural alternatives look great and don’t cost lives. Read on…

Today is Ash Wednesday! It’s officially the start of Lent and time to give something up. I don’t view this as ‘giving something up’ but in theory this is the perfect time to go vegetarian. It’s what you gain which is so interesting here…

Going veg for Lent is great for the animals, your health and the environment. After relishing in this lifestyle for 40 days, there should be no reason to go back to eating meat and fish – you’ll feel on top of the world and so will the animals spared from your dinner plate.

Check out the PETA US blog VegCooking.com for some amazing recipes to keep your tastebuds tingling over the Lent period and beyond.

Here are some great facts for going veg this lent:

• Compassionate celeb veggies include Moby, Pamela Anderson, Paul and Stella McCartney, Joaquin Phoenix and Natalie Portman.

• Vegetarians are typically slimmer than meat eaters: In a study of over 21,000 people, vegan men weighed 5.9kg less and vegan women 4.7kg less. With the media hype over incentives for the obese to lose weight, doesn’t going veg make more sense?

• More than 850 million chickens are slaughtered for food each year in the UK, whether you go down Jamie Oliver’s and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s free-range route or not. Meat is murder whichever way you look at it.

• It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat – that’s 100 times less per pound!

Good luck and be sure to let me know how you get on. I’d be interested to hear if anyone already had this plan, or vegetarians going vegan for Lent.