The biggest industry event yet to do so will ban exotic skins and feathers from its catwalks next year. The vice-president of corporate projects at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Yvonne Taylor, says thatSkl to Copenhagen fashion week raises the bar for other events.
The fashion weeks can take these big steps if they are pushed.
There is still a long way to go. While the prohibition follows similar moves from smaller fashion weeks, such as Stockholm and Melbourne, as well as brands such as Burberry and Chanel, it will be a while until exotic skins are considered cruel in the same. The runways of New York, London, Paris and Milan were home to an aviary of feathers last month. The so-called Millionaire Speedy bag is one of the most high-profile designs of the last year. The Louis Vuitton design was made out of crocodile skin and cost $1m, according to a report from the ethical fashion advocacy group Collective Fashion Justice.
A guest pairs a fur coat with a black bag during a fashion week.
The case against fur has taken hold after years of work by animal rights groups. Emma Hkansson, the founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, thinks that the fashion industry has decided that it is not acceptable to kill an animal specifically for fashion. She says that there is a lack of education for the mainstream consumer. According to Yvonne Taylor of Peta, there is a lot of animal abuse in both feathers and exotic skins. Workers use metal rods to kill crocodiles and alligators.
Hkansson's organisation consulted with Copenhagen fashion week to persuade them to adopt a policy that separates the animal from the final product. She showed people a photo of a dress made from feathers, but most didn't know it was made from feathers. Her investigation last year found that retailers had mislabelled real feathers as faux. Even if consumers do recognize feathers as animal-derived, or exotic skins as coming from crocodiles, La Manna highlights a cognitive contradiction: we always withdraw ourselves from the realities of what goes into our clothes, whether that's workers' rights abuses, or not.
She thinks that people in the west are more likely to care about a reptile than a mammal. Hkansson agrees that it is hard for people to connect with the idea that a reptile is sentient in the same way a mammal is. There has been a backslide in the case of fur because the cool girls have started wearing it again. The mob wife trend has seen large fur coats and Sopranos-chic. The designer of the ethical brand Collina Strada said that there is a resurgence in the use of fur and faux fur. The trend was all over the fall collections.
There is emphasis on rewearing vintage furs and upcycling materials, but Taymour believes it is the glamorisation that is harmful.
Hkansson believes that there is a push by the industry to say that these materials, such as fur and leather, are natural as opposed to fossil fuel-derived synthetic materials. Hkansson suspects fatigue is the reason for the regression on fur. When there were dolphins in Venice, everyone was excited about what the world could be, but then we got a bit tired and went back into hyper- capitalism.
The conversation has stopped because of increased costs to produce garments, particularly sustainable ones, according to Taymour. She said that people need to be willing to play a longer game in order for solutions to work.