Urban Outfitters Will Be ‘Closed for Cruelty’ by PETA

New Global Campaign Points Out That Alpaca, Wool, Leather, Mohair, Cashmere, Down, and Silk Belong to Their Original Owners

For Immediate Release:
October 12, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

On Tuesday, PETA activists and an “alpaca” will surround the Urban Outfitters store on High Street and block the entrance as part of the group’s new international campaign demanding that all Urban Outfitters, Inc., brands—which include Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters—stop selling alpaca fleece and anything else cruelly obtained from animals. The protesters will hold signs showing the terrified faces of exploited animals and reading, “The Face of Fashion Is Fear.”

When:    Tuesday, October 13 , 12 noon

Where:    Urban Outfitters, 1782 N. High St., Columbus

PETA launched the international campaign after Anthropologie was implicated in a first-of-its-kind PETA investigation into the alpaca industry, revealing that workers at a farm in Peru tied crying alpacas to a rack, pulling their legs so hard that they nearly came out of their sockets, and left them with bloody wounds from rough shearing. The mutilated animals spit and vomited in fear.

“Urban Outfitters brands want to appeal to open-minded and progressive young people, but they’re missing the mark by selling fleece taken from animals who get beat up, cut up, and killed in the process,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Anything forcibly taken from an animal is a product of fear, and PETA is holding Urban Outfitters to its consumer pledge of sustainability and ethics by calling on the company to sell only vegan materials, which would be easy for it to do because it already stocks them.”

PETA and its affiliates have released dozens of videos revealing that during shearing, workers hit, kick, and mutilate gentle sheep for their wool; leave sensitive goats with bloody, gaping wounds at mohair and cashmere operations; burn, electroshock, beat, and slaughter cows for leather; yank out the feathers of ducks and geese by the fistful for down; and boil silkworms alive to produce silk.

Broadcast-quality video footage is available upon request. 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.