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Donna Karan did it. Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren did, too. In fact, many fashion designers have acknowledged the cruelty of fur and decided they don’t need to use it.
So what’s up with über-cruel Karl Lagerfeld? The chief designer from fashion house Chanel recently attracted the ire of animal activists everywhere by defending fur. In an interview with the UK’s Telegraph, the designer said the fur industry is justified because the “beasts’” fur comes from would “kill us if they could.”
As PETA’s Michael McGraw points out, “Lagerfeld seems particularly delusional with his kill-or-be-killed mentality. When was the last time a person’s life was threatened by a mink or rabbit?”
Lagerfeld was quoted as saying that hunters who have learned no other skills depend on the fur industry to make a living. Yet 85 percent of fur comes not from hunters, but from Chinese fur farms, where there are no laws to protect the millions of animals who are routinely beaten and skinned alive.
Fortunately, plenty of designers, including Stella McCartney and Marc Bouwer, are showing the world it’s fashionable to go fur-free.
Lagerfeld better hope he comes to his senses before he meets a killer rabbit in a dark alley.
PETA is reporting today that designer Donna Karan has announced that her fall 2009 lines will be fur-free and that she has “no plans” to use fur in the future. This announcement came days after PETA launched their (now offline) DonnaKaranBunnyButcher.com Web site and after fashion guru Tim Gunn sent Karan and designer Giorgio Armani a video that he narrated for PETA showing animals skinned alive for their fur and urged them to shun fur in their designs.
“Any designer in the fashion industry who does not want to watch the PETA video and see exactly what happens to animals and how they’re treated and how the product that they use comes to the marketplace, I believe, is egregiously irresponsible,” said Gunn in an interview about the video.
PETA and other activists have been working for nearly a year on 
the Donna Karan campaign ― protesting outside her boutiques, crashing her runway show and exposing her cruel use of fur online. PETA spokesperson Michael McGraw said that Armani and Karan were singled out because “they have both made pledges to be fur-free, but have gone back on their word when it comes to rabbits, as if rabbits aren’t fur-bearing animals.”
In response to the claims, an Armani rep said, “Despite the fact that we have previously sold products made from animal fur, the Armani Group has now decided to renounce making such items with the exception of those in rabbit fur, the by-product of an animal that is a staple source of food… We must stress that PETA is exploiting our name to stir up public opinion without acknowledging that we actually include very few fur items in our collections, while certain competitors of ours base much of their business on furs.”
Please contact Armani to tell him that while the meat of gentle rabbits killed for their fur in China is sold to be eaten, the suffering they endure is exactly the same.
PETA’s long-running campaign against Donna Karan was just kicked up a notch. For years the pressure group has been working to get the designer, who runs the fashion labels Donna Karan and DKNY, to honor her one-time promise to stop using animal fur in her collections. To help put an end to Donna Karan’s fur cruelty, PETA has launched a new parody Web site, DonnaKaranBunnyButcher.com. (Warning: graphic images.)
The new site allows activists to take action, watch and share videos, grab wallpaper for your computer and stay up to date on PETA’s campaign to stop the Bunny Butcher.
PETA launched this campaign to help animals on fur farms, who spend their entire lives confined to cramped, filthy wire cages. Fur farmers use the cheapest killing methods available to end the lives of animals, including neck-breaking, suffocation, poisoning and anal or vaginal electrocution. Many animals on fur farms are electrocuted by having rods inserted into their rectums and 240 volts of electricity sent through their bodies, frying the animals from the inside out in order to keep from damaging the pelts. The animals convulse, shake and often cry out before suffering painful heart attacks.
There are many ways that you can share this information, which will help countless fur-bearing animals. A couple of simple ways are by emailing PETA’s parody Web site to friends or by adding one of PETA’s new “Donna Karan: Bunny Butcher” videos to your own Web page or online profile.
Please be a voice for these defenseless animals! Tell Donna Karan you will boycott her collections until she no longer uses the skins of dead animals. Please write to or call Donna Karan now.
Please send polite comments to:
Ms. Donna Karan
Donna Karan International, Inc.
550 Seventh Ave.
New York, NY 10018
212-789-1839
212-789-1856 (fax)
sparham@dkintl.com
Other ways to help stop the Bunny Butcher:
- Join PETA’s A-Team if you want to be on the front lines to help stop Donna Karan from selling fur and to get involved in other animal issues at local and national levels.
- Support PETA’s work to help them put an end to Donna Karan’s support of killing rabbits in ways that would break your heart.
- Ask your friends, family, and coworkers to contact Donna Karan to build even more support for the boycott.
- Post a banner to your personal Web site or your MySpace or Facebook page to let the world know that Donna Karan butchers bunnies for their fur.
- Join the “Donna Karan, Bunny Butcher” cause on Facebook, and tell your friends to join too.
- Share the videos on MySpace or Facebook—or wherever you are online. Whether you have five friends or 5,000, sending the video to your friends is a great way to expose the cruelty that goes into wearing the skins of dead animals.
- Subscribe to the official PETA YouTube channel so that you will be the first to know about their newest videos.
