SINCERE OR SENSATIONAL: A History of PETA During Fashion Week

Image Courtesy: peta.org

Just three weeks ago, in a dramatic display of animal rights and ethical fashion activism, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) disrupted Coach's highly anticipated New York Fashion Week (NYFW) show at the New York Public Library. The front row of the runway was decorated with high-profile celebrities, such as Jennifer Lopez, who has been an ambassador for Coach since 2019, and Anna Wintour. 

Also sitting front row were two PETA activists; One of the protestors was dressed fashionably and accessorized with a large poster that read “Coach: Leather Kills,” and the woman with her, in full-body paint that mimicked the effect of being skinned alive, had the same sentiment across on her chest. The viral video of these women, recorded by a third protester, shows them hopping from their front-row seats straight onto the runway.

Image Courtesy: dailymail.co.uk

This recent dumbfounding demonstration of free speech, given its circumstances and provocation, begs so many questions: How did NYFW security miss the enormous white poster with red letters? Or the woman who was gruesomely body-painted with muscles and tendons? Most importantly, how on earth did they all manage to sit front row at the show? Objectively speaking, it’s suspicious.

To be fair, it makes perfect sense to leverage the world’s attention from the most anticipated fashion events of the year as a platform for protest, especially as it relates to animal furs and sustainability in the industry. This Coach fiasco is just one occurrence in an ancestry of activism during Fashion Week. However important the message may be, the execution by PETA remains questionable throughout time.

Let’s review PETA’s protest strategies from the beginning of their show-stopping, or show-stealing, demonstrations: Oscar de la Renta 1991. Over 30 years ago, PETA turned heads with a Fashion Week protest that was barely similar to anything they’d ever done before. Naked and unafraid, the animal sympathizers took the stage and bore a sign that read, “We’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur!” This stunt was all the buzz in the media, landing the animal-cruelty protesters a cover page for the New York Times style section. 

These early protests weren’t enough for these luxury brands to make the definitive ban on animal furs and pelts. In fact, all three of these fashion houses only recently banned the use of animal products in the past five or so years. Alas, it appeared as though the more frequent PETA’s attempts to strike change, the less tolerated they became. It's recorded that protesters, who are almost always women, have been tackled off the runway by security guards. With no regard for gentleness, PETA responded much like these guards: Aggressively and dramatically. 

Image Courtesy: glamour.com

Two weeks ago at London Fashion Week, protester Lucy Ferguson dressed as a bloody goat, plucked clean of its fur, became PETA’s latest headline-grabbing stunt to raise awareness for cruel cashmere sourcing. Demonstrators reenacted the gruesome process of harvesting cashmere, tying up Ferguson’s arms and legs and ripping faux fur from her body.

While there is much ethos and emotion behind PETA and what it stands for, the delegation of protests to make people care may be doing more harm than good. The conversation of animal cruelty is undoubtedly one to be had, but the method in which this organization sparks the discussion is undoubtedly, historically, not one to be tolerated.

The reason we’ve all heard of PETA is more than likely due to a problematic PR stunt, an example of which could include using KKK imagery at a dog show protest or running billboard advertisements that suggest dairy products cause autism. Their desperate attempts for attention have quite a long history of being sexist too. Did you notice the persistent theme of naked women over this 30-year span of Fashion Week demonstrations? It’s simply blasphemous to organize a charity, with a moral principle as important as PETA’s, and discredit its ethos entirely through disruptive, provocative, and humiliating protest tactics. 

The worst thing in common between all of these, though, is that someone gave the “OK” for them to happen. Behind the news headlines and unsettling footage we see online is a network of people enabling the disturbance, more than likely for clicks and views that bring home the money for them all. It’s calculated, corrupt and counterintuitive for the message PETA stands for.

Strike Out, 

Madeline Jankowski

Editor: Caroline Kostuch

Athens