Our new collection of Ladies bags for summer is registered by The Vegan Society!

I'm very excited about our new collection of Ladies' bags registered by The Vegan Society and I can't wait to hear what our customers think of them!

It's a first for George and I'm delighted that 100% of our ladies' bags range will be vegan, with no animal-derived products in the making. It's something we think will appeal to lots of consumers – not only vegans and vegetarians but to people who want to buy vegan bags for cultural reasons.

I'm vegetarian but until I started working on the range I had no idea about the kind of things that went into non-vegan bags – not just leather, but ingredients on things like glues and dyes. Even the coating on a metal clasp can be non-vegan.

We've teamed up with The Vegan Society to give our customers the reassurance that no animal-derived ingredients have been used anywhere in the manufacture of our bags. Every new bag will have a swing ticket carrying The Vegan Society's trusted Vegan Trademark which helps consumers identify a product that is free from animal ingredients and has not been tested on animals. The Vegan Trademark allows our customers to purchase with confidence.

We did a lot of work at the start of the collection to map out the ingredients list and trace everything back through the supply chain – not just at our factory and their suppliers, but to all of the people that make the dyes and the glues. This information was all thoroughly checked and documented by The Vegan Society.

The biggest challenge was making sure that all our suppliers understood what vegan actually meant – especially further down the supply chain – that's where The Vegan Society were invaluable.

Helena Boal (pictured right) is the Buying Manager for Accessories at George. Together we make sure that all the products and materials we source are great value, great quality and fit for purpose and end use – and that they meet all technical and legal requirements.

We work up front with our supply base ensuring any product that is shown to our internal teams is something we know we can deliver.

I personally love all the bags in the range, however I do have two favourites. Firstly, the classic cross-body bag because it's multi-functional with lots of useful pockets, which is very handy. As a mum to a 10 year old and a 21 month old that's very important! Second is the hobo slouch bag as it's a great easy bag to use for work.

The new collection of bags will be online and in store from July onwards!