Paris Fashion Week: Virgil Abloh calls in sick, climate change protesters have their say – what else have we learned so far?
World’s biggest fashion week beset with climate change and animal rights protests, while Off-White founder Abloh stays home and Korean labels Kiminte Kimhekim and Rokh steal the spotlight
Paris Fashion Week began by bracing itself for climate and animal right protests, and with one of its biggest star designers – Virgil Abloh – missing.
Animal rights group Peta took to the streets before the first show to denounce fashion’s love affair with leather, saying tanneries were among the world’s worst polluters.
Activists poured “toxic mud” on their heads in front of the Eiffel Tower to hammer home that “leather is a dirty business”.
“The leather industry produces dangerous toxic waste and is responsible for the deaths of more than a billion animals a year to produce fashion accessories that are destroying the planet,” said Marie-Morgane Jeanneau.
Another rights group, One Voice, released an undercover video of “appalling conditions” at a mink farm in France, where they said up to five animals were kept in each small, dirty cage.
Earlier this month Extinction Rebellion activists had called for London Fashion Week to be cancelled entirely because of the climate emergency and the damage done by the industry.
Other protests are likely in Paris over the nine-day marathon of spring/summer shows – which began on September 23 – by far the world’s biggest and most important fashion week.
But there were signs the environmental message is getting through.