Gillian Anderson to Demand Saint Laurent and Brioni Shed Fur

Gillian Anderson to Demand Saint Laurent and Brioni Shed Fur

Paris – During Kering’s annual meeting on Thursday, Gillian Anderson will call on the fashion house to ban fur on behalf of PETA US, which has been a Kering shareholder since 2020. Last month, Kering confirmed that Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen are officially fur-free, leaving Saint Laurent and Brioni as the company’s only holdouts. The actor has also sent a letter on behalf of PETA US to Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault, urging the fashion titan to enact a company-wide policy banning fur.

“[A fur-free] policy would mesh perfectly with your environmental objectives at The Fashion Pact,” writes Anderson. “It’s illogical to keep this dwindling, dangerous trade afloat for the sake of the few remaining unscrupulous designers who can’t break their fur habit.”

Anderson, who won both a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe this year for The Crown, has starred in PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign and narrated a video exposé of fur farms. In her letter, she notes that the use of toxins to keep pelts from decomposing impedes Kering’s sustainability mission and that fur farms have spread COVID-19 among workers and wild animals. Multiple countries have reported mutations of the novel coronavirus that originated on fur farms.

As PETA exposés show, many animals killed for their fur spend their entire lives in cramped cages, where they frantically pace back and forth, gnaw on the cage bars, and even resort to self-mutilation. They’re often killed by gassing, electrocution, drowning, or poisoning, and some are even skinned alive. Hundreds of top designers and retailers have dropped fur, including Armani, Prada, Chanel, Gucci, Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Maison Margiela, and Versace.

The full question that Anderson will ask at Kering’s annual meeting is available upon request. 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 us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6344; [email protected]

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