13 September 2024
Photos: Woman ‘Skinned Alive’ to Protest Against Leather Outside London Fashion Week
London – Today, London Fashion Week attendees got an eyeful outside the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN show space when a PETA supporter screamed in pain as her “skin” was torn off – with the help of special-effects make-up – to call attention to the suffering animals are subjected to in the leather industry.
NEWGEN is hosting several up-and-coming designers’ shows during London Fashion Week. To highlight to them and attendees that leather is cruel and animal-free fashion is the future, the group also displayed a sign reading, “Leather Is Someone’s Skin. Wear Vegan.”
Images are available here, and footage is available here.
“For leather bags, jackets, and shoes, sensitive cows are sentenced to a lifetime of suffering and a miserable death,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on the fashion community to reject this abusive industry and instead choose the many vegan textile options made from pineapple, apple, mushroom, or even cactus that are kind to animals and the planet.”
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that more than a billion animals are killed for leather every year. They endure extreme crowding and deprivation as well as castration, branding, tail-docking, and dehorning, all without any painkillers. At abattoirs, their throats are cut and some are even skinned and dismembered while they’re still conscious.
With consumer demand for animal- and planet-friendly materials on the rise, more and more designers are moving away from animal skins and opting for plant leathers. Mirum, a premium plastic-free vegan leather made using natural rubber, requires no tanning and no water during manufacture. Top designer Stella McCartney has always been proudly leather-free, and Helsinki Fashion Week has been leather-free out of concern for the environment since July 2019.
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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