Video: PETA Supporters Invade Urban Outfitters Conference to Call Out Cruelty

For Immediate Release:
January 10, 2023

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA supporters—carrying signs proclaiming, “Urban Outfitters: Animals Are Not Clothing” and “The Face of Wool Is Fear”—disrupted the 25^th Annual ICR Conference at the Grande Lakes Orlando, during presentations by URBN executives to demand that the company stop selling materials obtained from cruel treatment of animals. Protesters stormed the stage and shouted, “Animals are dying for URBN brands!” while conference attendees cheered them on. Footage of the disruption is available here, and footage showing cruelty to animals in the leather, down, wool, and cashmere industries is here.

“Urban Outfitters ignores the cries of animals in pain so as to profit from fleeting fashion trends,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is urging Urban Outfitters to allow animals to keep the skin, fleece, or feathers that belong only to them.”

PETA notes that workers hit, kick, and mutilate sheep for their wool; burn, electroshock, beat, and slaughter cows for leather; and pluck geese so roughly for down that they shriek in pain and fear and are left bloodied. PETA and other PETA entities, along with more than 330,000 of their supporters, are calling on Urban Outfitters Inc.—which includes Anthropologie and Free People—to commit to selling only humane, animal-free clothing and accessories.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.