Several protests have taken place across the capital. Picture credit: bones64 - CC0
Anti-fur campaigners disrupted London Fashion Week activities last week, gathering at different locations in the capital.
Animal rights group Surge organised a collective action to protest at the Burberry, Mary Katrantzou, and Christopher Kane shows. They also targeted 180 The Strand, the official building where the event was held.
“If something is morally reprehensible, which the fur trade is,” says Mark Glover, Director of Respect For Animals, “it’s absolutely correct for people to be allowed to go out and express their disapproval of it.”
“There are a hundred million animals that are killed every year and in incredibly bad conditions, […] trapped in the wild to be mutilated, all for what? For nothing. For just a product that nobody needs.”
One of the campaigners climbed on Mary Katrantzou catwalk stage alongside models, filming with her phone and screaming: “Shame on you. Shame on all of you!”
Mary Katrantzou’s team released a statement after the event, stretching that the collection was completely fur-free.
London Fashion Week encountered activism on a bigger scale than past years, but more than 90 percent of its designers confirmed to the British Fashion Council (BFC) that they would not be using fur.
“I call it the Gucci effect”, Jane Halevy, founder of International Anti-Fur Coalition, says. “After Gucci, Burlington, Tom Ford and many others are going fur-free.”
“There is a growing awareness in the UK and in Europe,” says Mr Glover, “but Denmark, for example, is one of the biggest fur breeding countries in the world, and Poland has huge fur farms there now […] so it’s still very much a European issue as well.”
However, Mrs Halevy believes fur-trade is going to end, eventually: “I don’t know when, but I’m absolutely sure the world is going to be fur-free one day. The seeds we’re planting. They are growing, this I know for sure.”
Alessandro Mascellino