There is a question that sits quietly inside most of the fashion industry, one that rarely gets asked aloud because the answer is uncomfortable. Why is animal leather still the default? Not because it performs better. Not because it is the only option. But because it has always been there, and the category has never been forced to justify it.

Cathryn Wills asked that question. Then she built something.

I came across Sans Beast through a mutual connection in Melbourne's design circuit, someone who described the brand as "the kind of thing that shouldn't need to exist but absolutely does." That line stayed with me. When I finally sat down with Cathryn, remotely, across time zones, I understood why. She does not pitch. She does not perform. She talks about materials the way an engineer talks about load-bearing structures: precisely, with respect, and with the quiet confidence of someone who has tested every variable before committing. You either track what she is saying, or you do not. She is not going to slow down to help you catch up.

For those unfamiliar, here is the download on Cathryn Wills. She spent close to thirty years in Australian fashion retail. She started in the trenches at Benetton, moved through design at JAG, studied fashion at RMIT, worked at Country Road, then landed at MIMCO in 2004 as a freelance knitwear designer. By 2007 she was leading the business. By 2012, she held the title of Managing and Creative Director, overseeing six hundred staff and a hundred and twenty stores across Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. MIMCO under Wills was not a small operation. It was a machine. She built collections, opened international markets, ran profit and loss, expanded into shoes, jewellery, sunglasses, scarves, and every other accessory category you can name. She did it for twelve years. Then she left.

The reason was not burnout, though that would have been understandable. It was a shift. In 2015, she moved to a vegetarian diet. By late 2016, she was fully plant-based. The disconnect between spending her professional life immersed in the world of animal leather and her evolving ethical position became, in her words, impossible to ignore. She stepped down from MIMCO in mid-2016, consulted briefly through an advisory firm called Creativity Agenda, and in May 2017, established Sans Beast.

The name is French. Sans: without. Beast: animal.  No ambiguity. No soft landing.

Sans Beast launched to market in March 2018 at the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival and almost immediately won Best Vegan Accessories at the PETA Fashion Awards. The brand is PETA-approved, self-financed, produced in Dongguan, Southern China, and now stocked in David Jones across Australia and New Zealand, alongside a studio and showroom in Brunswick, Melbourne, behind a bright yellow door on Fallon Street. Cathryn also holds the role of Chairperson at Crumpler. She lives in Brunswick with her partner John Wessels, a furniture maker, and two cats, Luna and Wolf. She writes about fashion industry sustainability for Enkel Insights. She visits her factories. She goes to Lineapelle in Milan every year to test new materials by hand. She has even been to the cactus fields in Mexico in search of the next new environmentally sustainable product.

This is not someone who stumbled into ethical fashion because it was trending. This is someone who spent three decades learning how the machine works, then walked out of the machine and built a different one.

This is how our conversation unfolded;

ON THE GAP NO ONE WAS FILLING

GIZELLE REGAN What did the accessories market look like when you were deciding to build Sans Beast?
CATHRYN WILLS Nine years ago, the options felt limited. Non-animal bags were either positioned as cheaper alternatives, or they were direct copies of luxury designs. There wasn't a brand that brought together aesthetic, intention, and purpose. Something that looked considered, had a story, and stood for more than just product. That gap felt obvious. So I built it.

ON WHAT THE BAG SHOULD DO BEFORE YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS MADE FROM

GR When someone picks up a Sans Beast bag for the first time, what should they feel?
CW Style and function, immediately. And then a moment of surprise when they realise it is not made from animal skins.
GR That order is deliberate.
CW Completely. The bag has to resolve as a fashion object first. Clean silhouette, assertive hardware, proportions that work. You register the object before you register the material. If you have to explain why the bag is good, you have already lost.

ON THE MYTH OF NATURAL EQUALS BETTER

GR What do people still get wrong about non-animal materials?
CW That they are cheap. Or that they are "just plastic." The reality is far more complex. Plastics and petroleum-based products exist across almost every part of modern life, from cars to cables to infrastructure, and they are also part of the traditional leather supply chain itself. The conversation should not be as simple as "natural good, synthetic bad." That is not how it works. The real issue is how materials are produced, used, and then reused. Recycling, upcycling, reducing volume. That is where the shift needs to happen.
GR Where does conventional leather actually sit when you look at the data?
CW There is no simple answer when it comes to the environmental impact of materials. Lifecycle assessments look at multiple factors: water use, carbon emissions, resource extraction, pollution. Depending on what you measure, you get different results. But the idea that natural materials are always better does not hold up. Reports, including earlier work from groups like the Global Fashion Agenda, have shown that materials like leather, wool, and silk can carry significant environmental impact across their lifecycle. Conventional cow leather carries high carbon load and chemical tanning impact, with some lifecycle models placing it around a hundred and ten kilograms of CO2 per square metre. Many newer alternatives test significantly lower in production emissions while introducing different end-of-life trade-offs.
GR So the debate is not one material versus another.
CW Correct. It is scale. Volume of production. Volume of consumption. And a system built around disposability. That is the problem.

ON APPLE SKINS, OLIVE WASTE, AND CACTUS FIELDS IN MEXICO

GR Walk me through how you choose materials. You have worked with apple, olive, cactus, rubber. How does that process actually happen?
CW It is ongoing research. I go to Lineapelle in Milan each year and spend time with manufacturers working in alternative materials. We have tested everything from cactus leather, I have visited the fields in Mexico, to Mirum, and more recently AppleSkin and olive-derived materials. What draws me in is always the same: hand feel, durability, price accessibility for our customer, and how the material wears over time.
GR What is the biggest barrier?
CW Scale. Many of these materials are still emerging, which makes pricing difficult. Luxury brands can absorb that. For us, it is about balancing innovation with accessibility. We are building a customer who wants an alternative to leather but is not shopping at luxury price points. A Sans Beast bag made from Mirum sits around two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. A comparable piece at Stella McCartney is over a thousand. Same material. The difference is we are not asking you to pay for a name. We are asking you to pay for the work.

ON ETHICAL MANUFACTURING AND WHAT YOU CAN FEEL WALKING THROUGH A FACTORY

GR What will never change about how you design and produce?
CW Ethical manufacturing, always. Every factory we work with is audited across wages, safety, hours, and insurance. But beyond that, I look at the human details when I visit: how people move in the space, how they are treated, the condition of the environment. You can feel very quickly whether a place is respectful or not.
The materials will always be animal-free. And the design process will stay slow. Functional, considered, aesthetic-led. We could move faster, but that is not the point. Good design takes time. And purpose matters. Our charity alignments are part of the foundation, not an add-on.

ON THE BAG SHE KEEPS GOING BACK TO

GR Which bag do you personally carry?
CW The Long Lunch Day bag. It fits a thirteen-inch laptop but does not feel like a work tote. The proportions are right, the strap sits well, and the material wears beautifully over time. It just works.

ON THIRTY YEARS IN THE MACHINE

GR You ran MIMCO for over a decade. Six hundred staff. A hundred and twenty stores. What did that chapter teach you that you carry into Sans Beast?
CW Everything. How to read a sales floor. How to build a team. How to make mistakes and survive them. I once said publicly that the list of mistakes I have made is long and varied, and I meant it. But I also grew the business every single year, in sales and profit. When I left, I knew the only way to follow my path with integrity was to build something true to my ethos. I was a late bloomer as an entrepreneur. But after all those years, I had the full toolkit.
GR Do you miss it?
CW I miss the scale. I do not miss the disconnect.

I kept turning over a single thought. Cathryn Wills is not interested in convincing you. She is not building a movement. She is not selling guilt. She is building bags. Very good ones. From materials that do not require an animal to die and that, by most credible assessments, carry a fraction of the environmental load. She prices them so you do not need a trust fund to buy one. She audits her factories. She visits her suppliers. She sources mushroom rubber from Natural Fiber Welding, apple waste leather from Italy, olive-derived textiles from Turkey, and cactus hides from Mexico. She donates to Edgar's Mission, plants trees through One Tree Planted, and funds Sea Shepherd monthly. She does this without a single outside investor. She does this from behind a yellow door in Brunswick.

The fashion industry talks endlessly about sustainability. Most of that talk is exactly that. Talk. Cathryn Wills is not interested in talking. She is interested in the bag in your hand, what it is made from, how it was made, and whether it will still look good in five years.

Fashion object first. Different material base.

That is the whole thesis. And it is more than enough.