HOW TO WIN: What it takes to rid fashion of animal fur –– and leather & feathers
“With fur ousted from magazines and runways, the fashion industry has admitted that suffering isn’t style — so why are animals’ stolen skins still part of the picture. Cows form lifelong friendships and grieve when they lose loved ones. Sheep are highly social and build deep bonds within their flocks. Alligators are devoted mothers who vigilantly protect their eggs. These individuals don’t want to suffer on filthy farms or be violently killed for coats, bags, or shoes — they simply want to live. Will a ‘Shame of Leather’ campaign succeed as the ‘Shame of Fur’? A similar lesson applies: people need not see cruelty to reject a cruel product. What they most need to see is others like themselves turning away from it.
ANIMALS 24-7: “What would it take to rid fashion of animal fur?” mused longtime sustainable fashion consultant Lucianne Tonti for the fashion magazine Vogue on December 11, 2025.
“In the space of a couple of weeks in early December 2025,” Tonti recounted, “animal rights activists celebrated three big announcements”.
“The first was when Poland — the world’s second largest producer of animal fur behind China — passed a law that proposes to end fur farming by 2033.
“Then, the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced animal fur will be prohibited at New York Fashion Week from September 2026.”
Finally, Tonti wrote, “Hearst Magazines, publisher of Elle, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar and Esquire among others, announced a ban on fur in its editorial and advertising content. Vogue Business publisher Condé Nast made a similar move in October.”
Business of Fashion writer Jessica Kwon two days earlier reported that Hearst Magazines “has added a new regulation to the sustainability section of its ‘About Us’ web page:
“Across our portfolio of wholly owned global brands, Hearst Magazines prohibits the promotion of animal fur in editorial content and advertising. (Our guidelines recognize defined exceptions and apply to all new business and future content).”
Noted Kwon, “Hearst Magazines’ ban follows a five-day protest campaign against the media company by grassroots organization the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, which included a December 5, 2025 demonstration in the lobby of global headquarters Hearst Tower in New York City. The Coalition Against the Fur Trade said it would next be campaigning against the U.S. luxury brand Rick Owens.”
“What would it take to rid fashion of animal fur?” asked ANIMALS 24-7 editor Merritt Clifton on assignment for the long defunct Animals’ Agenda magazine in November 1986.
The assignment came just a few days after the annual “Fur Free Friday” demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere had mostly spotlighted the failure of a decade of protests to accomplish anything at all against the enormously cruel fur industry.
Emphasizing the cruelty of fur trapping and fur farming in often shockingly graphic literature, distributed with ever-increasing fervor, animal advocates had nonetheless seen steep annual increases in U.S. retail fur sales.
The fur trade looked unstoppable. But business information obtained by Clifton from inside the fur industry itself told a different story. The fur trade was not worried about anti-fur literature targeting cruelty, but was desperately afraid of literature targeting image…
With fur ousted from magazines and runways, the fashion industry has admitted that suffering isn’t style — so why are animals’ stolen skins still part of the picture. Cows form lifelong friendships and grieve when they lose loved ones.
Sheep are highly social and build deep bonds within their flocks. Alligators are devoted mothers who vigilantly protect their eggs. These individuals don’t want to suffer on filthy farms or be violently killed for coats, bags, or shoes — they simply want to live.
Will a ‘Shame of Leather’ campaign succeed as the ‘Shame of Fur’? A similar lesson applies: people need not see cruelty to reject a cruel product. What they most need to see is others like themselves turning away from it. MERRITT CLIFTON
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