The article would be much stronger, if Ruth La Ferla had not merely mentioned certain trends in eco-fashions and cruelty-free clothing on college campuses, but had actually gone to the major local design schools, e.g. FIT, SVA, Parson's, Pratt, and talked to students and teachers.

As is so often the case, the NYTimes comes across as just a guide to high-end fashion-conscious shoppers.

Also, we read this:
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Certainly Ms. Mari and other merchants are beneficiaries of a spike in the vegetarian population. As of last year, there were an estimated 4.8 million vegetarians in the United States, one-third to one-half of them vegan, according to the Vegetarian Resource Group, a nonprofit educational organization. That number has nearly doubled since 1997.
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I have no way of challenging those figures.  But I would have thought that in this country of 300 million, there are a few more vegetarians than 4.8 million.  And also, I would be surprised if even as many as a third are vegan.

Anyway, aside from those quibbles, this is good news, and the promise of much better.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I agree that 5 million seems small, but I've long recognized that here in dark-dark blue land it is very hard to understand what goes on in ruby-red land.  

I also agree that the vegan number seems almost absurdly high; I would put the estimate at less than 10%, which of course is just my uneducated guess.  But seriously, I know many, many vegetarians.... but not a single vegan (outside of the staunch vegans on Gristmill, of course).