Stella on Sustainability: Fashion Is Literally Getting Away With Murder
The third annual Kering Talk took place at the London College of Fashion this week, and designer Stella McCartney led discussions about how animal skins should be a thing of the past in the fashion industry.
The event focused on sustainability in luxury brands, so Stella decided to talk about how unsustainable and unnecessary animal skins are as well as how cruel obtaining them is. The designer is famous for her compassionate choices, having rejected the use of leather, fur, and exotic skins in her collections. She urged brands to choose environmentally friendly vegan materials instead: “You really can’t tell the difference“, she said. “There’s no reason to kill 15 million innocent creatures“.
The crocodiles, snakes, and alligators who are killed for “luxury” handbags are usually raised on squalid farms and crammed together by the thousands. They are killed in the most gruesome ways and can be mutilated and skinned alive before being left to die in agony.
“I’m sure [Kering] will give up python farms very soon“, Stella said.
The demand for kinder fashion that doesn’t support cruelty is growing, and consumers are looking for alternatives to animal skins.
“Fashion is one of the most harmful industries on the planet”, she said, “and I think people are a little more aware of that now“.
More and more vegan brands are emerging, and even big international chains are stepping away from animal-derived materials.
Stella took the title of Designer of the Year at PETA’s Fashion Awards for her work towards making fashion more animal-friendly, and she’s leading the growing list of designers who are making big changes in the industry.
