Fashion Week Message: Fur is New Nothing
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - PETA
September 13, 2006
By Paula Moore
Fur is the new nothing. You’re not likely to see that headline splashed across the pages of Vogue magazine anytime soon, but that’s the message that Jay McCarroll—the dishy designer who won the first season of Bravo’s Project Runway—will be sending at New York Fashion Week, now in progress. McCarroll’s highly anticipated collection, his first since delighting fans with his sharp wit and innovative creations on his way to becoming “The Next Big Fashion Designer,” will be completely fur-free. “The animals need their fur more than I do,” he says.
Make way for the newest generation of designers. We should all pay attention—the fashion statements they’re making are about more than just “it” bags and sky-high heels.
McCarroll’s anti-fur sentiment is being echoed again and again by today’s hippest style icons and their young fashion-obsessed fans. Marc Bouwer, who is also showing at Fashion Week and whose ultra-glam gowns are worn by Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton, and Runway’s Heidi Klum, refuses to work with fur or leather. The same goes for catwalk queen Stella McCartney, whose collection for trendy international retailer H&M (also fur-free), flew off the racks. Tyra Banks, the popular host of America’s Next Top Model, prefers faux fur to the real thing. Mall staples Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Forever 21, Gap, J. Crew and others all have fur-free policies.
So why, as we head into Fashion Week, does the September issue of Vogue feature a 14-page spread of silver-fox bubble skirts, sable leg warmers and chinchilla-topped leather boots? Who wears this stuff? I would hazard a guess that most young women are skipping past this gross display of decadence and heading straight to the Kirsten Dunst article. (Actually most young women are probably reading In Style instead—according to Condé Nast’s media kit, the median age of Vogue readers is 37.)
Could it be that Anna Wintour, the famously demanding, fifty-something Vogue editrix who inspired The Devil Wears Prada, doesn’t know as much about what young women want as she would like to think? Her rival, Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue and the woman who has replaced Wintour as the most closely watched editor in the front row at fashion shows, explains that she once wore fur, but doesn’t now “because it has a smell.”
Last year, Jay McCarroll, the young designer showing at Fashion Week, told Salon.com that he’s not interested in winning over the Vogue set with his fashions: “I want complete accessibility—affordability, most importantly. Because that’s how I shop, that’s how my friends shop, that’s how my family shops. I don’t know anyone who wears Fendi fur, and those people are disgusting to me. I don’t want that to be my market.”
McCarroll says his ideal line would utilize “organic fibers and no fur and no leather and no slave labor. … And I’ll work with organic cosmetic companies and no companies that do animal testing. The way so many companies work is so disgusting. But the more I learn about that, that’s more leverage that I have. I’m an animal lover, I’m an earth lover.”
In a world full of excess—where elitist fashion editors try to convince us that $4,300 skirts with mink trim and $2,300 fox-topped totes, created by cruelly electrocuting animals on fur farms, are anything but shamelessly self-indulgent—McCarroll’s attitude is refreshing. And it’s the way of the future. Says McCarroll, “With so many fun and fashionable alternatives, there’s no reason to use fur.” And there’s certainly no reason to buy it.
Paula Moore is senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
Fur is the new nothing. You’re not likely to see that headline splashed across the pages of Vogue magazine anytime soon, but that’s the message that Jay McCarroll—the dishy designer who won the first season of Bravo’s Project Runway—will be sending at New York Fashion Week, now in progress. McCarroll’s highly anticipated collection, his first since delighting fans with his sharp wit and innovative creations on his way to becoming “The Next Big Fashion Designer,” will be completely fur-free. “The animals need their fur more than I do,” he says.
Make way for the newest generation of designers. We should all pay attention—the fashion statements they’re making are about more than just “it” bags and sky-high heels.
McCarroll’s anti-fur sentiment is being echoed again and again by today’s hippest style icons and their young fashion-obsessed fans. Marc Bouwer, who is also showing at Fashion Week and whose ultra-glam gowns are worn by Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton, and Runway’s Heidi Klum, refuses to work with fur or leather. The same goes for catwalk queen Stella McCartney, whose collection for trendy international retailer H&M (also fur-free), flew off the racks. Tyra Banks, the popular host of America’s Next Top Model, prefers faux fur to the real thing. Mall staples Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Forever 21, Gap, J. Crew and others all have fur-free policies.
So why, as we head into Fashion Week, does the September issue of Vogue feature a 14-page spread of silver-fox bubble skirts, sable leg warmers and chinchilla-topped leather boots? Who wears this stuff? I would hazard a guess that most young women are skipping past this gross display of decadence and heading straight to the Kirsten Dunst article. (Actually most young women are probably reading In Style instead—according to Condé Nast’s media kit, the median age of Vogue readers is 37.)
Could it be that Anna Wintour, the famously demanding, fifty-something Vogue editrix who inspired The Devil Wears Prada, doesn’t know as much about what young women want as she would like to think? Her rival, Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue and the woman who has replaced Wintour as the most closely watched editor in the front row at fashion shows, explains that she once wore fur, but doesn’t now “because it has a smell.”
Last year, Jay McCarroll, the young designer showing at Fashion Week, told Salon.com that he’s not interested in winning over the Vogue set with his fashions: “I want complete accessibility—affordability, most importantly. Because that’s how I shop, that’s how my friends shop, that’s how my family shops. I don’t know anyone who wears Fendi fur, and those people are disgusting to me. I don’t want that to be my market.”
McCarroll says his ideal line would utilize “organic fibers and no fur and no leather and no slave labor. … And I’ll work with organic cosmetic companies and no companies that do animal testing. The way so many companies work is so disgusting. But the more I learn about that, that’s more leverage that I have. I’m an animal lover, I’m an earth lover.”
In a world full of excess—where elitist fashion editors try to convince us that $4,300 skirts with mink trim and $2,300 fox-topped totes, created by cruelly electrocuting animals on fur farms, are anything but shamelessly self-indulgent—McCarroll’s attitude is refreshing. And it’s the way of the future. Says McCarroll, “With so many fun and fashionable alternatives, there’s no reason to use fur.” And there’s certainly no reason to buy it.
Paula Moore is senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
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