Copenhagen Fashion Week is about to shake up the fashion landscape in 2025. The Denmark-based event just announced that it’s banning exotic animal skins and feathers. Its just-published 2025 sustainability requirements lay out the new rules.
This decision comes after a litany of high-profile investigations by PETA entities showing the torment that animals endure in the exotic-skins and feather industries. A PETA Asia investigation into the Thai exotic-skins industry just revealed that thousands of snakes are cruelly confined and then bashed over the head with hammers and impaled with hooks while they’re still moving. The two python farms that PETA Asia’s investigators visited supply skins to Caravel, a tannery owned by fashion conglomerate Kering—the parent company of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and other brands.
We want to celebrate Copenhagen Fashion Week for raising the bar for other events by removing all exotic skins and feathers from its catwalks. This move is a logical evolution after the event’s ban on fur, introduced in 2022, and reflects what every stylish consumer has come to realize: Compassion is always in fashion, ethical and environmentally friendly vegan materials are the future, and the future is now.
Exotic skins and feathers are obtained through abhorrent cruelty. Snakes are pumped up with air or water while they’re still alive, and lizards are crudely decapitated. Workers ram metal rods down crocodiles’ spines and into alligators’ brains in an attempt to kill them and slit inquisitive baby ostriches’ throats when they’re just a year old.
Now, all eyes are on the organizers of other fashion week events, who must follow suit and immediately implement public policies against these unnecessary, unfashionable, and unethical materials.
Welcome to the Fashion Revolution, Copenhagen
Copenhagen Fashion Week joins Helsinki Fashion Week, Melbourne Fashion Week, and Stockholm Fashion Week in banning exotic skins from its runways—and leads the way with Melbourne Fashion Week by banning feathers. These moves are just part of fashion’s compassionate revolution.
Top-name fashion brands—including Brooks Brothers, Calvin Klein, Chanel, Diane von Furstenberg, Jil Sander, Nordstrom, Tommy Hilfiger, Tory Burch, Victoria Beckham, and Vivienne Westwood—are also ditching exotic skins.
Stay Fashionable and Sustainable: Always Buy Vegan!
It doesn’t matter whether you’re buying top-label brands—animal-derived clothing is always gauche.
When you shop, you can make a difference and help reduce the number of animals senselessly killed for fashion by choosing one of the many innovative and sustainable vegan materials available, including apple, cactus, and mushroom leather.
Check out PETA’s “How to Wear Vegan” guide so that you can keep animals out of your closet.
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