Brigitte Bardot Foundation Protests Fendi’s Runway Show

Activists from the Brigitte Bardot Foundation—France’s leading animal protection NGO—demonstrated last week outside designer Karl Lagerfeld’s Fendi fashion show in Paris. One activist dramatically shed her fur coat to reveal a bodysuit that looked like an animal’s bloodied musculature, metaphorically demonstrating the cruel act of fur removal while others held signs that read, “Stop the torture!” The show, called Haute Fourrure (a pun on haute couture), heavily relied on animal pelts and skins. Bardot, a legendary French actress and preeminent animal-rights activist, said in an interview with The Guardian that “the fur industry is one of death and suffering and, faced with this normalization of cruelty, we must react.” She added that fur is still popular in the fashion world because of “pride, stupidity, or just plain ignorance,” causing “the lethal exploitation of animals to flourish once again” despite a dip of fur-wearing in the 1990s. Bardot also wrote an open letter to Lagerfeld’s pampered cat Choupette to highlight the hypocrisy of loving a companion animal while endorsing the slaughter of animals for their fur. “Fur is not luxury: it is an industry of death and suffering,” Bardot said. “It is unbelievable that in 2015 this is something we have to fight for.” In other fashion news, HUGO BOSS just adopted a fur-free policy.