Anti-fur protests used to be fairly common occurrences during New York Fashion Week. But after several major designers and brands have pledged to stop selling fur, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have set their sights on getting the fashion industry to give up leather.
PETA has enlisted Stella McCartney to help get the anti-leather message out. The designer and the activist group will be reviving the “I’d Rather Go Naked” campaign at New York Fashion Week with an “It’s About F*cking Time” we ended the use of leather one. The phrase was inspired by a tank top that McCartney wore, when her father Sir Paul McCartney was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s now being used as an activist rallying cry. He started what has become a legendary musical career, by joining John Lennon’s group The Quarrymen in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960.
There will also be a rally near the Brooklyn Bridge Tuesday and the designer will host a party in her downtown store that night. Invited guests will also get a glimpse of the refreshed Stella McCartney flagship in New York City.
McCartney, who has never used leather in her collections, will be making a major statement in the windows of her SoHo store. Actor Caylee Cowan and other animal lovers will appear Tuesday with strategically placed “No Leather Ever” signs and briefs from Karla Welch’s The Period Company. They and other supporters will then march from the Greene Street boutique to Washington Square Park. The event will double as the launch of McCartney’s winter campaign and PETA’s “No Leather Ever” pledge. The latter is targeted at consumers and calls on them to ditch animal skins.
A media request to The Period Company was unreturned Friday.
PETA claims that more than one billion animals are killed annually due to the global leather industry. Most of the skins used for leather goods are sourced from India, China and developing countries, where animal welfare laws are “not enforced or non-existent,” according to the group.
Last fall PETA supporters caused a stir at the Coach fashion show, when an activist took to the runway wearing body paint that was meant to looks like flesh, tendons and muscles, and another supporter walked behind her holding a sign that read “Coach: Leather Kills.” PETA also blindsided the designer Michael Kors by approaching him at his runway venue. More recently, PETA staged a protest at the designer’s Rodeo Drive store in Los Angeles, calling on the company to end its use of “planet and animal-killing leather.”
In February, PETA targeted Coach again with a “Coach: Let Cows Live” message at its fashion show at the James B. Duke House.
PETA debuted its “I’d Rather Go Naked” campaign in the 1990s with The Go-Go’s posing in the buff with banner touting their cause. In the years that followed, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Pamela Anderson, Taraji P. Henson, Eva Mendes, Dennis Rodman, Olivia Munn, Kim Basinger, Ireland Basinger-Baldwin and other high-profile personalities modeled in the campaign au naturel.