Fashion Icon Twiggy Asks, ‘Would You Wear Your Dog?’ As Fashion Week Fur Flies

For Immediate Release:
18 February 2010

Contact:
Sam Glover 020 7357 9229, ext 229; [email protected]

London – On the eve of London Fashion Week, original supermodel Twiggy Lawson appears in a striking new PETA ad that pleads, “If You Wouldn’t Wear Your Dog, Please Don’t Wear Any Fur”. The ad, which shows Twiggy posing cheek to cheek with a beautiful rescue dog named Jas, goes on to say, “The only difference between our ‘best friends’ and animals killed for their fur is how we treat them”.

“Since the age of about 20 when I became aware of the cruelty involved in the fur trade, I made the decision never to wear fur again”, Twiggy says in an exclusive PETA interview. “I have been totally opposed to wearing fur ever since.”

Twiggy refuses to use fur in her own clothing designs and forbids its use in any production in which she participates as an actor. She is also devoted to organisations that find homes for abandoned and abused dogs, such as greyhounds who have been used in racing.

Fur farming has been outlawed in the UK, but it still exists in countries such as China, which is the world’s leading fur exporter. Undercover video footage obtained by PETA US and its affiliates reveals that rabbits, foxes and even dogs and cats on Chinese fur farms are confined to tiny cages and exposed to all weather extremes. In China and elsewhere, killing methods such as gassing, strangling, electrocution, neck-breaking and bludgeoning are so crude and unreliable that many animals end up being skinned alive.

Twiggy joins the ever-growing number of international celebrities – including singer Leona Lewis, film actor Eva Mendes, fashion designer Stella McCartney and French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy – who have taken a stand against the fur trade.

For more information and to view the ad, please visit PETA.org.uk.