Wayne Hemingway Earns PETA Award For Taking Stand Against Fur

For Immediate Release:
12 August 2010

Contact:
Alice Barnett 020 7357 9229, ext 229; [email protected]

London – Award-winning designer Wayne Hemingway can add yet another honour to his fireplace mantle: a “Hero to Animals” award from People for the Ethical Treatment Animals (PETA) UK, recognising his decades-long stance against the use of fur in fashion. Most recently, as the organiser of this weekend’s Vintage at Goodwood event – which will host more than 200 stalls featuring retro fashions from the 1940s to the 1980s – Hemingway has once again proved himself to be a friend to animals by making the trendsetting event fur-free.

“Everything Hemingway touches seems to turn to gold – from his highly successful early venture, Red or Dead, to his recent building designs”, says PETA’s Mimi Bekhechi. “Fortunately for animals, he also has a heart of gold.”

The cutting-edge designer is well known for making fashion accessible to everyone and for promoting clothing and housing creations that are environmentally friendly as well as animal-friendly. He won the British Fashion Council’s “Street Style Designer of the Year” award three years in a row for his innovative and wildly popular Red or Dead company, which he and his wife sold in the late 1990s.

Animals on fur farms spend their entire lives in tiny, filthy cages. Some animals are driven insane from confinement and pace endlessly in circles. Animals used for their fur are killed by electrocution, poisoning or gassing or by having their necks broken. In China, the world’s leading fur exporter, animals on fur farms are commonly skinned alive. Millions of dogs and cats are also killed for their fur in China. This fur can be deliberately mislabelled as fur from other species before it is distributed to stores around the globe – including in Europe.

In shunning fur, Hemingway is in good company. Many of the world’s top designers – including Vivienne Westwood, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Stella McCartney – refuse to use fur.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.