PETA Calls On Tate Modern to Ban Exotic Skins Ahead of Gucci Show
09.05.2024
London – Following Gucci’s announcement that its Cruise 2025 show will be presented at Tate Modern on 13 May, PETA has rushed a letter to Tate Modern Director Karin Hindsbo urging her to prohibit cruelly obtained reptile skins from being displayed at the art gallery. In the letter, the group points out that a new PETA exposé of python farms in Thailand that supply the brand’s owner, Kering, revealed workers bashing snakes on the head with hammers, impaling them with hooks, inflating them with water – as they continued to move – and then skinning them for Gucci’s wallets, belts, and purses.
“Gucci’s exotic-skin accessories, made from once-living individuals who were housed in filth and hacked to pieces for a fleeting fashion statement, belong in a horror museum,” says PETA Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “PETA is calling on Tate Modern – Britain’s home to design innovation and modernity – to never support the killing of wild animals and permanently ban any display of exotic-animal skins at the gallery.”
PETA entities have exposed rampant cruelty at slaughterhouses that supply skin to the fashion industry, including workers hacking at crocodiles’ necks and shoving metal rods down their spines[BE1] . An earlier exposé of slaughterhouses in Indonesia that supply Gucci documented workers taking up to 14 blows to behead lizards with machetes, causing them a prolonged, agonising death.
More enlightened purveyors of fashion – including Burberry, Victoria Beckham, Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, Selfridges, and Liberty – have banned exotic skins, and many brands are meeting the demand for sustainable animal-friendly products by offering vegan leather made from pineapples, mushrooms, apples, cacti, or other innovative materials.
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, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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