Breaking: PETA ‘Model’ Leads Anti–Exotic Skins Disruption of Hermès Fashion Show
Breaking: PETA ‘Model’ Leads Anti–Exotic Skins Disruption of Hermès Fashion Show
Paris – Today, as Hermès held its much-anticipated show at the Garde Républicaine in Paris, a PETA supporter stormed the runway, brandishing a sign that read, “Hermès: Drop Exotic Skins.” See video footage of the runway takeover here. (The footage is available to download here.)
This is the fourth fashion week show disrupted by PETA entities this season. Runway takeovers also happened at shows by Burberry (London), Gucci (Milan), and Coach (New York).
“Crocodiles are bludgeoned, gutted, and skinned alive to be turned into bags, belts, and other accessories,” says PETA UK, Europe and Australia Vice President Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA took over Hermès’ runway to call on the brand to drop these cruelly obtained materials and to remind everyone that animals are not ours to wear.”
PETA US became a Hermès shareholder in 2015 after exposing cruelty at reptile farms in Texas and Zimbabwe that supplied a Hermès-owned tannery. In 2017, an exposé in Vietnam showed crocodiles confined to grim concrete stalls with unsanitary pools and being subjected to a violent death. Footage showed workers cutting into their spines while they were still alive and peeling off their skin.
In addition, a recent investigation by Kindness Project filmed on Australian farms owned by Hermès revealed that crocodiles were being kept in cramped, barren enclosures and cages and then mutilated and stabbed with a screwdriver.
PETA notes that it takes three crocodiles to make just one Hermès bag and that many designers, including Mulberry, Victoria Beckham, Karl Lagerfeld, Paul Smith, Chanel, and Stella McCartney, have banned exotic skins from their collections.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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