Insecta Shoes is a Brazilian brand of handcrafted ecological footwear that doesn't use any raw materials derived from animals. Insecta unites social-environmental and aesthetic awareness to create unique products, demonstrating that green fashion can and should be fun, colourful, and stylish. "We want to debunk the idea that an ecological product can’t be beautiful, so we coined the term "ecosexy" to describe this union of ethics and aesthetics. Our products have a visual, social, and environmental impact," says founder & CEO Barbara Mattivy. Insecta emerged from the visionary idea of upcycling vintage clothing to create colourful, creative, smallbatch vegan shoes. With the cloth of one dress, for example, they are able to make 5 pairs of shoes--no more, no less. The first pair were created and quickly sold, and in January 2014 Insecta Shoes was born. As they grew, more sustainable and ambitious solutions became apparent: they began turning recycled plastic bottles into uppers, recycled rubber into soles, scraps of fabric into insoles, and recycled plastic into toecaps. Currently, the brand has two stores in Brazil, one in Porto Alegre and a flagship in São Paulo, with other points of sale in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, and Spain. Now, after 5 years, Insecta is going international. In April 2019, they launch a distribution center in North America to better distribute their shoes.