Northbrook College Fashion Department Implements Animal-Friendly Material Policy in Collaboration With PETA

18.10.2024

Brighton – Following communications with PETA about how animals suffer for clothing, shoes, and accessories, Northbrook College, part of Chichester Colleges Group, has banned the use of fur, wild-animal skins, angora, and ostrich feathers throughout its entire fashion department.

“The course promotes responsible fabric sourcing – the use of feathers, furs and other unethical skins and fibres is disallowed. This is clearly outlined in the ethics of the programme,” says Northbrook College Programme Leader of BA (Hons) in Fashion Design Gayle Atkins. “The course is working closely with PETA and with companies developing innovative vegan fabrics using food waste. At Northbrook College, our BA Fashion graduates design for a sustainable future. Our relationship with PETA is highly valuable to our current and future practice.”

“This policy will encourage fashion students, many of whom already refuse to work with animal-derived materials, to focus their talents on creating innovative and luxurious cruelty-free designs,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “PETA thanks Northbrook College for sparing foxes, snakes, rabbits, and birds immense pain and suffering, and we’re calling on other fashion programmes to take note and follow suit.”

PETA exposés have revealed that animals killed for fur are caged, bashed on the head, and electrocuted. In the reptile-skins industry, snakes’ heads are hit with hammers and impaled on hooks while the animals are still moving. For angora, rabbits are typically kept in small, filthy cages and subjected to an agonising plucking ordeal several times a year before being killed. And ostriches are forcibly restrained and electrically stunned before their throats are slit for their feathers.

Meanwhile, consumer demand for animal- and planet-friendly materials is on the rise and more and more designers are moving away from animal skins, choosing instead to embrace exciting vegan textile options, such as leathers made from pineapple, apple, mushroom, and cactus as well as fur made from corn.

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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