The fashion brands’ parent company PVH Corp. will no longer use snake, crocodile, and other skins obtained from wild animals in an effort to “drive fashion forward for good.”
PVH Corp, the parent firm of fashion brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, vowed this week not to use wild animal hides such as snake and crocodile in its future fashion collections. The step follows talks between PVH and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) community on the risks of keeping wild animals in hazardous conditions to harvest their skins for apparel, especially in relation to the spread of zoonotic disease like COVID-19. “At Tommy Hilfiger, we’re committed to creating a better fashion industry by creating fashion that ‘Wastes Nothing and Welcomes All,’” the Tommy Hilfiger brand told PETA in a statement. “We have always [taken] and will always take the environment, human rights, our community and related matters very seriously, which is why we don’t use fur or exotic skins in any of our collections. Together, we can drive fashion forward for good.”
PETA sent PVH a package of vegan chocolates to thank the company for its pledge to ban endangered animal skins. “An animal that suffered a brutal, bloody death is behind any crocodile-skin or snakeskin piece,” PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews said. “As wildlife biologists point out, in addition to being cruel and unnecessary, the capture, confinement, and slaughter of wild animals is what spawns pandemics like the one we’re all suffering through now.”
A growing number of fashion brands—including Brooks Brothers, Jil Sander, Chanel, Diane von Furstenberg, HUGO BOSS, Victoria Beckham, and Vivienne Westwood—have implemented similar bans on the use of exotic skins.
SOURCE: VegNews
