Fashion Trailblazer’s Message Loud and Clear: No Feathers on the Runways
10.12.2024
London — After exposés by PETA entities revealing that birds exploited by the feather industry endure a miserable life and a violent death, Helsinki Fashion Week and VLGE.COM founder Evelyn Mora has signed PETA’s Feather-Free Pledge and promised never to showcase feathers on her platforms. This step follows the founder’s ground-breaking decision to make the sustainability-focused platform leather-free in 2018.
“In 2024, the vast array of innovative and sustainable solutions in the market leaves no justification for supporting outdated, unethical practices in fashion. I challenge consumers to live by their values,” says Mora. “Our purchasing choices carry profound interdisciplinary impacts—environmental, social, and economic. Ironically, the most self-serving decision we can make is to support sustainable brands, invest in thoughtfully crafted products, and adopt a long-term perspective in how we approach fashion and lifestyle.”
“There is no place for cruelty on today’s catwalks – which means feathers must go,” says PETA Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “PETA thanks Evelyn Mora for standing up for compassionate fashion once again and calls on all Fashion Weeks everywhere to cut ties with the feather trade.”
Ostriches are the most commonly exploited birds in the decorative feather trade. PETA entities have documented how workers in the fashion industry forcibly restrain young ostriches, electrically stun them, and slit their throats before tearing the feathers from their still-warm bodies. Other birds fare no better. On crowded farms, peacocks, pheasants, emus, turkeys, and chickens all endure miserable lives and painful deaths so that their feathers can be stolen for fashion. A PETA Asia investigation into down operations in Vietnam revealed that ducks suffered from gaping, bloody wounds and languished in filth before being stabbed in the neck while still conscious.
PETA notes that many designers and retailers — including Stella McCartney, Felder Felder, Richard Malone, Patrick McDowell, VIN + OMI, Pīferi, Sarah Regensburger, Gymshark, SkinnyDip London, and Ibiza Fashion Festival —have already signed its Feather-Free Pledge, while many others are opting for luxurious vegan-friendly feathers made from bamboo, metals, and recycled 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 PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 207-923-6244; [email protected]
#