Breaking: PETA Disrupter Crashes Burberry Fashion Show With Anti-Leather Message
London – Moments ago, a PETA supporter stormed the runway of the Burberry show at London Fashion Week holding a sign that read, “Leather Kills”. See video footage of the runway takeover here.
“It’s time to kick cruel, toxic leather off the catwalk,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on Burberry and other fashion brands to do the right thing and replace outdated animal skins with luxurious plant leathers, which are better for animals and the planet.”
Leather is a billion-dollar co-product of the meat industry, and profits from leather sales drive the slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals each year. A PETA exposé of the global leather industry found that animals are exposed to the elements and denied food and water during gruelling journeys to abattoirs, where their throats are slit while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain. Turning animal skin into leather requires up to 170 unique chemicals – including cyanide, aluminium, and chromium. Animal agriculture, which includes the leather industry, is one of the leading contributors to the climate catastrophe, and cow leather has been ranked as the most polluting textile in fashion by industry reports.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that Burberry has already banned the use of fur, angora, and exotic skins and urges it to take the next compassionate step by dropping all animal-derived materials, including leather, from its collections. Sustainable vegan leather made from apples, cork, corn, grapes, mushrooms, pineapples, or tea mimics the properties of leather without the cruelty to animals or environmental devastation.
The action follows a disruption by PETA in September, when an activist crashed Burberry’s runway with the message that “Animals Are Not Clothing” .
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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