Breaking: PETA France Activists Disrupt Hermès Show to Call Out Brand for Use of Wild-Animal Skins
28 September 2024
Breaking: PETA France Activists Disrupt Hermès Show to Call Out Brand for Use of Wild-Animal Skins
Paris – Today, during the Hermès Spring/Summer 2025 show at Paris Fashion Week, three PETA activists took turns storming the runway wearing dresses that read “Animals Are Not Fabric” and holding a sign with the message “Hermès: Ban Wild-Animal Skins.” A video of the action is available here.
“PETA will continue to shine a spotlight on the animals who are mutilated and skinned alive to be made into bags for as long as Hermès carries on selling products made from their skins,” says PETA Vice President for Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “Animal suffering has no place on today’s runways, and it’s high time the brand made the switch to the cruelty-free, plant-based materials that compassionate consumers are demanding.”
Undercover investigations, including a video released by Australian charity Kindness Project that was filmed at Hermès-owned crocodile farms, reveal the horrors reptiles are subjected to: they’re confined to cramped cages or small concrete pits filled with filthy water before being electrocuted, dragged, and mutilated – some while still conscious. The footage shows one animal trying to get up after a worker cut the back of his neck open with a blade and inserted a screwdriver into his skull in an attempt to scramble his brain. Last December, an investigation by PETA Asia revealed that thousands of crocodiles raised for their skin were living in crowded pits at a farm in Thailand and killed using the crude “nape-stab” method, an attempt to sever the spinal cord, which likely causes extreme pain and a slow, agonising death. One crocodile was seen moving for 23 minutes after a worker plunged a metal blade into the animal’s neck.
The Hermès event is the third fashion show disrupted by PETA entities this season: Burberry’s London show was also stormed, as was Dior’s Paris Fashion Week show earlier this week, echoing previous seasons when PETA entities disrupted shows at London, Milan, New York, and Paris Fashion Weeks to protest against the use of animal skins. An activist was seen on the runway of Hermès’ Autumn/Winter 2024 show last September with the same message.
PETA points out that it takes three crocodiles to produce a single Hermès bag and that many fashion designers including Victoria Beckham, Karl Lagerfeld, Mulberry, Balenciaga, Chanel, and Stella McCartney have banned wild-animal skins from their collections.
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:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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