‘Bag the Skins!’ PETA’s Provocative Plea Rises Above Beverly Connection Shopping Center
For Immediate Release:
February 13, 2025
Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382
The bag has a distinctly human look to it on the “Leave Cruelty Behind. Please, Wear Vegan” message imparted by a larger-than-life iguana and directed at shoppers heading into the Beverly Connection and neighboring Beverly Center. PETA’s sky-high appeal looms near stores that peddle exotic skins, like Gucci and Louis Vuitton—and urges shoppers to turn their backs on leather and any other item that stripped animals of their lives.
“Animals don’t volunteer to become bags and belts, and our undercover videos show the frightening and gruesome ways in which they are killed for their skins,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA urges everyone to clean cruelty out of their closets and embrace stylish vegan materials that no one had to suffer and die for.”
Iguanas are excellent communicators and use their dewlap—the flap of skin that hangs under their chin—to greet each other, establish a hierarchy, and impress potential mates. Yet they’re among the more than 1 billion animals killed every year in the global leather industry. PETA entities have documented how the fashion industry chops off conscious lizards’ heads with machetes, hacks at crocodiles’ necks and shoves metal rods down their spines, and pumps snakes full of water to loosen their skin before it’s peeled off—often while they’re still conscious—among other atrocities.
The leather industry is also a major contributor to climate change, land devastation, deforestation, water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Sustainable vegan leathers are durable and fashionable without the cruelty or environmental destruction of leather.
PETA’s billboard is located at the Beverly Connection at the intersection of W. 3rd Street and La Cienega Boulevard.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
