French fashion company, Chanel made history when they announced "No more Croco for Coco" on the eve of the presentation of the fashion house's collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In an interview, Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Fashion at Chanel, said that the company would stop using fur and exotic skins such as crocodile leather.
International animal welfare organisation FOUR PAWS considers this as a huge milestone.
"Chanel is really taking a big step here. More and more luxury fashion houses refuse to use fur in their collections. The fact that Chanel additionally bans exotic skins, especially crocodile leather, is a reason to celebrate.
A caged polar fox at a Chinese fur farm. Picture: FOUR PAWS.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to source skins and leathers that meet Chanel's ethical and qualitative standards. In future research and development at Chanel will, therefore, concentrate on textiles and leathers, which are by-products of the food industry. This means that no more animals have to be killed especially for fashion – which, of course, we as an animal welfare organisation very much welcome,” says Thomas Pietsch, a wildlife expert at FOUR PAWS.
Every year more than 100 million animals are killed by the fur industry. Minks, foxes and tanuki suffer on fur farms in tiny cages, other species die a cruel death by traps. Processing fur into fur fashion requires high quantities of hazardous chemicals and high energy consumption. FOUR PAWS is committed to a long-term ban on the keeping and killing of animals for fur and to end the use of real fur in the fashion industry.