Celebrating animals during New York Fashion week
Creativity, innovation and beauty—that’s what we celebrated during New York Fashion Week this year.
Animals were front and center at this year’s events, thanks to Christian Siriano. The designer, who also helped us launch our rebrand earlier this year by creating a special Humane World for Animals signature print, styled three exclusive garments that use a black-and-white version of this animal-forward print for his New York Fashion Week show. A bra, coat and pants using this print celebrated animals on the runway.
And later this month, we’re partnering with Harlem Fashion Row and Khary Simon for a panel about animal welfare and sustainability within the Black fashion community as part of NYC Climate Week.
Not so long ago, these kinds of events would have been considered fringe rather than mainstream. I remember how for years fashion was almost synonymous with callous indifference to animal cruelty. Models paraded down the runway dressed in fur that, to those of us who had seen the horrific realities of fur factory farms, represented immense suffering. It was clear to only some of us back then that fashion built on suffering has no place in a humane world.
Today, thanks to tireless campaigning to raise awareness of this cruelty, fur is on its death bed. Dozens of well-known fashion brands and retailers worldwide have committed to being fur-free because they recognize that fur is ethically indefensible and therefore increasingly unmarketable. Most leading designers—including Saint Laurent, Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Valentino, Prada, Armani, Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, DKNY, Burberry, Max Mara and Chanel—have fur-free policies. Instead of using fur, fashion brands are innovating with sustainable, cruelty-free alternatives.
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