I’ve become of 2 minds about leather footwear & gloves:
The primary alternative to leather is plastic, which, when it breaks-down, sabotages the food-web, right?
Leather doesn’t do that.
I honestly don’t know what The Right Answer™ is, on that one, anymore.
I’m usually vegan, btw, not for ideological/religious reasons, but simply because doing otherwise blocks my ability to reach the meditations I need.
I do find butchering animal lives for a mere few-meals unethical, but refugee Buddhist monk Kelsang Gyatso pointed-out in one of his books, IF a person has anemia, THEN the right antidote is eating red meat.
He’s ordained, a Geshe, and he is recommending that right in his dharma.
Years-enduring clothing is a much less desolating consumption than needless meat-eating.
Exactly as that brilliant psychological truth in the Christian bible shows, naive truth, aka symbolic “truth”, is syrupy-sweet in one’s face/mouth, whereas digested & real, experience-induced-understanding Truth, is bitter.