Amsterdam Fashion Week Goes Fur-Free After Conversations with PETA
For Immediate Release:
7 March 2019
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
AMSTERDAM FASHION WEEK GOES FUR-FREE AFTER CONVERSATIONS WITH PETA
Fashion Week Bans Pelts: A New Step Forward Towards a Fur-Free Netherlands
Amsterdam – After talks with PETA, Amsterdam Fashion Week has committed to going fur-free at this season’s event, which starts tonight, and at all of its fashion events thereafter. This move comes at a well-timed moment, after the Netherlands – which used to be the world’s fourth biggest fur producer – passed a historic ban on mink farming that will take effect in 2024 and the city of Amsterdam confirmed that it discourages the use of fur.
“AFW is proud that in collaboration with PETA we will from now on be a fur-free platform!” says Danie Bles, CEO of Amsterdam Fashion Week.
“Today, as polls show, most Dutch people would never wear fur, and Amsterdam Fashion Week’s compassionate move represents the growing public desire for animal-friendly fashion,” says PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk. “Amsterdam Fashion Week has done the right, relevant thing in cutting fur from the event, and PETA looks forward to seeing beautiful animal- and eco-friendly vegan clothing on the catwalks.”
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that animals on fur farms spend their lives in filthy, cramped wire cages before they’re electrocuted, bludgeoned to death or even skinned alive. Investigations have repeatedly shown that cruelty is inherent in the fur trade, including in countries where the industry claims the animals are treated “humanely“.
Numerous top designers, including Chanel, Armani, Versace, Gucci, Burberry, Vivienne Westwood, and Stella McCartney, have banned fur, as have Helsinki, Melbourne, Oslo, and Perth fashion weeks – and last September, London Fashion Week was 100 per cent fur-free for the first time.
For more information on fur-free fashion, please visit PETA.org.uk.
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