Belgium’s GAIA has specially trained Jean-Claude Van Damme to kick the fur industry’s ass. The new ad campaign that is popping up on billboards throughout Europe takes a dark but serious turn, shedding light on the reality of fur production; Animals have their pelts ripped off. They go mad from confinement, they are deprived of everything they evolved doing in nature. Proper veterinary care is too expensive to be worthwhile and ultimately they experience a brutal and painful death. Even after they die, their bodies and feces and urine pollute waterways and the toxic tanning process damages ecosystems even further.
Please join Joshua Katcher for a pre-fashion-week presentation on “FASHION & ANIMALS: decoding & harnessing the dialect of fashion culture to help animals”, with Q&A featuring renowned, award-winning fashion designer John Bartlett.
This presentation premiered in October in Boston, then again in November in Paris, and now it comes home to New York City, just in time for fashion week.
This talk will focus on the symbols and iconography of various forms of power communicated through dress, and utilized in the fashion industry, exploring how those symbols and icons create a dynamic that not only rationalizes and excuses violence towards animals, but encourages their consumption and the display of their skins as the primary method of showcasing one’s individual sexuality, power and worth.
• I was totally thrilled when I came across this retro GQ cover from November of 1970. “Should animals become fur coats?” it asks, showcasing a man bottle-feeding a baby leopard while wearing a leopard coat with one sleeve missing. Where’s he gonna get the other sleeve? I wonder if they could have predicted what would happen over the next 40 years in fashion? Wish I could see the article. Anyone want to buy me an Ebay gift or a large deluxe framed cover-print from CondeNast for only $500? OK, fine… 20 greeting cards with the image on the cover for $39.95.
• When Karl Addison told me about his book, ZOO¡ Creatures of Curiosity, I was enthralled – I’ve always been fascinated by creatures of our own imaginations. Who wouldn’t love “a collection of aesthetically strange and unusual animals accompanied by preposterous tales of origin…whose goal is to inspire thought provoking conversations about the outrageous treatment of animals-both past and present. Without serious intervention into the destruction of wildlife habitats and continued experimentation on animals-wild and domestic-is a two-headed ostrich or a one-eyed Grizzly bear really that far off?” Get it on Etsy!
• Ronald is old and mean and he needs to join Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man, and Spuds McKenzie in the retirement home for marketing characters designed to entice children to hurt themselves. The organization, Corporate Accountability International launched Value the Meal, a campaign, which is described below:
“Value the Meal is a campaign led by Corporate Accountability International dedicated to reversing the global epidemic of diet-related disease. Launched in 2009, the campaign challenges McDonald’s and the fast food industry to curb the range of its practices that are contributing to the epidemic. The campaign’s advisory committee consists of leading experts on food and nutrition, marketing to children, and sustainable food systems.”
• Jake Shields recently won Peta2’s most veg friendly athlete of the year! I interviewed Jake way-back-when, and it’s awesome to see his career is becoming so successful – and that someone who demands so much from his body does it without meat. When he fights GSP in April, he will become the highest profile vegetarian athlete in the world. Go Jake! For a glimpse into the life of Mr. Shields, watch the trailer for an upcoming documentary about him here:
• LA Weekly is reporting on a new BBC show that will premiere in the US on January 18th on Current TV, called Kill It Cook It Eat It. This show is certain to get a large viewership – but I wonder just how honest a depiction of the slaughter really is, and whether the viewers get to visit large factory farms and USDA slaughterhouses (where 99% of meat comes from) or just the small, killing-with-kindness farms that maintain the bucolic myth of where our food comes from. In addition, pay careful attention to the “It” in the title. It’s not “Kill Them Cook Them Eat Them” – or “him” or “her” for that matter. They are careful to refer to animals as objects as opposed to individuals. Current TV’s description is as follows:
” …a diverse group of participants is challenged to procure their main course the old-fashioned way: by hunting and killing their chosen prey, butchering it in the slaughterhouse, helping to prepare it in the kitchen, and ultimately sampling it at the dinner table. Some may enjoy the process while others recoil, but for each diner it’s an intense journey that just may change their perspectives — and appetites — forever.”
•Writer Jim Edwards, from CBS’s BNET website, is calling for Harper’s Bazaar to be sued over it’s fashion spreads – which could open a legal floodgate to help animals on fur farms. Long-gone are the days when fashion editorials were created for the sake of fashion-as-art. A list that was accidentally left in a hotel lobby revealed (what most fashion industry insiders already know) that paid-advertisers are given priority when it comes to shooting fashion “editorials”, which “…appears to be a blatant violation of the FTC’s new guidelines for advertisers.” Edwards c0ntinues, “If the FTC sued Harper’s Bazaar magazine for not disclosing that its advertisers influence its editorial features it would do readers of women’s magazines — and the fashion business in general — a huge favor…the legal framework exists to make it a possibility, and the FTC has shown interest in bashing the fashion biz before.Animal rights attorneys, pay attention!
“A fashion editorial is clearly an endorsement, but does Harper’s disclose the “material connections” between its fashion shoots and the advertisers who buy ads and provide the garments? Not online. In Harper’s December shoot with Iman, the items are identified by designer and price but it doesn’t say whether the Michael Kors fur scarf in shot 1 was selected because Kors is No. 2 on Harper’s list of advertisers.”
A large portion of the demand for fur originates from paid-advertisers, which explains why so much fur is in every fashion mag. Fur marketing organizations that represent independent farms have millions of dollars to play with, considering the exorbitant mark-up of fur garments. There’s a lot of legal jargon in the full article that I’ll leave to you lawyers, but when it comes to heavily-funded designers that use fur, their days gracing so many pages of editorials could be numbered. This also gives stylists something to celebrate, since their craft was hi-jacked in the early nineties.
“Of course, readers of women’s magazines know that most of the editorial is either made up or bought-and-paid for by advertisers, so it’s tough to argue that consumers are “damaged” by them. Still, wouldn’t it be nice if one area of the fashion world wasn’t complete fiction?”
For most people into fashion and expressing personal style through clothes and accessories – it is not a WARdrobe unless there’s causalities. John Bartlett continues to be a outspoken voice of reason among his CFDA peers and his colleagues in the design world. He is a personal friend, an award-winning designer, and I’ve decided to reprint a compelling entry from his blog yesterday:
2010 was an incredibly interesting year and one that I will always remember as the year I woke up from a dream, of sorts. You see, earlier this year i decided to move towards a plant based diet and to move away from using leather in my main collection, John Bartlett. My boyfriend John Esty and I decided to stop wearing leather, even our shoes and belts, and have begun encouraging our friends to seek out alternatives to leather and other animal derived materials.
This journey was prompted, ironically, by all of the animal fur that has returned to the forefront of fashion this past year. The fall collections were dripping with fur from almost two-thirds of the designers showing in New York. I have learned that many of the younger designers are given free “fabric”(i.e. fur), funding for their shows and other swag like trips to visit the fur farms abroad. Designers who have never worked in fur are now using it with abandon. I asked one colleague, a fellow member of the C.F.D.A., why he used fur and he replied that he “could take it or leave it” but that he wasn’t bothered about using fur because the animals are “humanely gassed”. Does that sound strange to you? Am I the only one who thinks the fashion industry is light years behind other industries that have realized the unnecessary cruelty of using animals for selfish, outmoded ends.
When I realized how much work there is to be done in this fur-free arena, I met up with the Humane Society to see what i could do to help get the word out that the pitiless fur industry mistreats and kills more than 50 million animals a year. I joined the groovy team from the fur-free department at the Humane Society and spoke in front of a group of Parsons students about my feelings about fur. There is so much information to share about the dark side of the fur industry and any opportunity to get in front of students before they are brainwashed by the fur pushers is an opportunity to save lives.
By now, many of you know about the initiative I started,PINNACLE: Reinvent the Icon. This anti-fur initiative is staring to generate some serious interest from fashion professionals who are against the horrific treatment of animals killed for fur.
Model, activist, and Elle cover-girl, Jessica Sjoo has come on board the PINNACLE initiative! Jessica grew up in the Czech Republic and is a life-long vegan, a yoga instructor, and very anti-fur. Jessica is an amazing model who lives by her values. Look for Jessica’s exclusive editorial story and accessory collaboration for PINNACLE very soon!
If you are a model designer, photographer, writer, or any other fashion industry professional, how will you Reinvent the Icon?
I was asked by the Humane Society of the United States to be a Judge for their annual fashion student competition, Cool Vs. Cruel. I swung by Showroom Seven yesterday to have a peek at the finalists’ entires and pick my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, who all based their work on four inhumane designs by Zac Posen, Giorgio Armani, Burberry Prorsum, or Thakoon:
Choosing the winners was difficult, because I could see all the effort and love that went into each garment. When talented students go out on a limb to both challenge industry ignorance and heartlessness as well as take an ethical stand, I want to award them all! The whole rack looked incredible, and it took me well over and hour of deliberation as I inspected the construction, aesthetic, functionality, and even made the lovely ladies at Showroom Seven put on some of the garments.
The anti-fur sentiment is really growing, and people who believe things like fur coats coming from roadkill or animals that died naturally are finally waking up to the awful truth. I made a quick appearance on CNN’s story on the fur industry by Jane Velez Mitchell. Check it out at 2:10 – 2:20:
The Sept 20th 2010 New Yorker cover features an illustration by Bruce McCall of a Polar Bear, Raccoon, Bear and Tiger wearing fur garments. Bruce is known for illustrating the social ironies of modern life, and clearly this cover is a comment on fashion week, and the upcoming cold weather. I think the message is clear – it’s kind of ridiculous when one animal (ahem…) wears the skin of another. Or you could interpret it as “only animals wear fur“.
The anti-fur sentiment in New York is finally reaching a turning point, and it’s clear that once people find out how fur is made, they are speaking up about it. If fur is something that rubs you the wrong way, and you’ve got something to say, check out The Discrning Brute’s very own anti-fur initiative for designers and artists: PINNACLE.
Happy Fashion Week! I am thrilled to officially announce the launch of PINNACLE. PINNACLE is a collaborative initiative for designers, artists, and other creatives who want to craft an accessory that symbolizes the growing anti-fur sentiment.
Our first digital-tabloid is available online and can be downloaded and shared (a full-screen option will pop-up by hovering your cursor in the center):
The PINNACLE website, ReinventTheicon.com provides all the details about how to get involved and showcases contributions from designers, models, photographers, and artists. The gallery section is currently highlighting our maiden editorial story featuring wardrobe by Stella McCartney and John Bartlett and our spokesmodels, Karolina Babczynska and Adam Wallace (Ford Models), Photography by Gregory Vaughan, Styling by Joshua Katcher, Makeup by Brian Duprey, and Hair by Alejandra Nerizagal.
Please pass this magazine along.
As the weather grows colder, our fire grows fiercer. Joshua Katcher
“A fashion editorial is clearly an endorsement, but does Harper’s disclose the “material connections” between its fashion shoots and the advertisers who buy ads and provide the garments? Not online. In 
