To “promote a more human fashion industry”, animal fur will disappear from all editions and platforms of the fashion magazine SHE, the publication announced Thursday, which is part of a growing trend in the luxury sector. SHE is the first major publication in the industry to announce this measure to the world, banning fur not only in its editorial content but also in its advertising spaces.
“The presence of fur in our pages and on our digital media is no longer in line with our values, nor with those of our readers,” said Valeria Bessolo Llopiz, vice-president and international director of publication, owned by the group. French Lagardère. It is about “promoting a more human fashion industry”, she declared announcing this decision during the conference The Business of Fashion VOICES 2021 organized by the specialized information site The Business of Fashion, in Chipping Norton, in central England.
33 million readers
“We are in a new era and the ‘Gen Z’, which is the privileged target of fashion and luxury, has very high expectations in terms of sustainability and ethics,” she then explained to the ‘AFP, in reference to the generation born from the end of the 90s.
From Mexico to Australia, via Japan or the United States, the 45 editions of this publication, which claims 33 million readers and one hundred million visitors per month on its 55 digital platforms, have undertaken to exclude the fur. Thirteen of them already apply this measure, 20 will put it in place on January 1 and the rest in early 2023.
Welcoming the decision, PJ Smith, fashion manager for the US branch of the NGO Human Society International, said he hoped “other fashion magazines will follow his example.”
“This announcement will spark positive change across the fashion industry and have the potential to save countless animals from a lifetime of suffering and cruel death,” PJ Smith told Chipping Norton.
“The promotion of fur belongs to the old issues of fashion magazines of yesteryear,” also estimated with AFP the director of PETA UK, Elisa Allen.
The furious French federation of fur
This animal rights organization “congratulates the main current publications – including British Vogue, InStyle USA, Cosmopolitan UK and the brand new Vogue Scandinavia – for excluding fur from their editorial content, and we have no doubt that they will extend this measure to advertising, ”she added.
Criticizing “discrimination against advertisers”, the French federation of fur for its part said Thursday evening in a press release “consider continuing” the platform of the magazine SHE for “refusal of sale”. The French fur industry believes that the decisions of creators and consumers are due to “the pressure of radical movements”. In recent years, under pressure from animal rights activists, the fashion world has gradually turned its back on fur.
Banned from the podiums
But while it is banned from catwalks in Amsterdam, Oslo, Melbourne or Helsinki – which has also excluded leather – the most prestigious “Fashion Weeks” organized in Paris, Milan and New York leave the choice to each brand. However, more and more brands are renouncing it: among them the Italians Gucci, Versace and Prada, the British Burberry, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, the Americans Donna Karan, DKNY and Michael Kors and the French Jean-Paul Gaultier and Balenciaga.
Commitments coinciding with public opinion: in 2020 a YouGov poll indicated that 93% of Britons refuse to wear fur and another from Research Co showed that 71% of Americans are opposed to the slaughter of animals for their fur .
In France, nine out of ten people are opposed to the fur trade, according to an IFOP survey for the 30 Million Friends Foundation. In June, Israel became the first country in the world to ban its sale for fashion.
For its part, the fur industry denounces the substitution of this natural product by synthetic skins made of plastics harmful to the environment.
