Hi, just wondering if fuggs are vegan. As in, do they contain products made from animals?
As far as I can tell, "fuggs" is a portmanteau of "fake" and "uggs", and so fuggs are "fake" uggs, meaning fake ugg boots. Uggs or ugg boots are a kind of boots traditionally made from sheepskin/shearling, and sometimes with suede leather (cow skin) on the outside.
But there's a bit of confusion about what "fuggs" or "fake uggs" means. Unlike something such as "faux fur" or "faux/fake leather", where it's pretty clear that will be vegan and not made from animals like the traditional kind is, "ugg" has some weird brand authenticity thing going on.
I might get some facts wrong here, but from what I could gather, there are 2 companies, called "UGG" (American brand) and "UGG Since 1974" (Australian brand) which both lay some kind of claim to what can be considered an authentic ugg boot. Uggs were first made in Australia, but I think the American UGG brand often sues other companies, including those in Australia, for using the "ugg" name. However in some places ugg simply means the style of shoe rather than the brand.
So unfortunately due to this, I think there might be 2 different meanings of "fuggs" - one I believe indeed means vegan ugg boots which don't use animal skins/products, while the other meaning is simply an ugg boot made in the traditional way from animals but just not by the "official" UGG brand.
In all this confusion, how can we truly answer the question of "Are fuggs vegan?" Is the answer somewhere between "They could be, sometimes." or "No one knows, really." ?
In my opinion, this is like asking "are cookies vegan?". What kind, which recipe, has it been altered, all questions that need to be asked any time you want to eat a specific cookie to know what ingredients were used to make them.
Each brand of 'fuggs' will be made differently, and only the ones without animal products are vegan. If people want to know if their specific shoes are vegan, they can contact the manufacturer for a list of materials used.
You may want to ask about the glue as well.