Down-Free Farfalle Puffer Wins PETA’s Praise Over Vegan Pastabilities

For Immediate Release:
March 14, 2023

Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382

Dubbed the season’s “it” jacket by The New York Times, Rachel Antonoff’s kitschy noodle-print Parker Puffer has won PETA over: The coat is filled with animal-free poly-down instead of feathers. So in thanks for showing kindness to birds with the far-fetching farfalle design, PETA is sending the designer a vegan cake decorated with a bow-tie pasta design.

“[This] coat exudes personality while allowing birds to keep their coats and express their personalities,” writes PETA Senior Director Danielle Katz in a letter enclosed with the gift. “As you seem to know, the down industry is inhumane and unsustainable …. In welcome contrast, your Parker Puffer offers further proof that animals need not be exploited for fashion.”

In its letter, the group shares findings from nine exposés, including a recent PETA Asia investigation revealing that ducks are crammed into filthy sheds and forced to live on painful wire flooring or confined to dirt lots strewn with feces—even on farms and at slaughterhouses that supply companies selling purportedly “responsible” down. Investigators documented that workers stabbed ducks in the throat while they were fully conscious and cut off live birds’ feet.

To help all the shoppers who want to avoid this cruelty but can’t snag a sold-out Parker Puffer, PETA offers a roundup of high-tech down-free options on its website. Today, brands such as The North Face, Save the Duck, NOIZE, and Wuxly Movement all sell warm, stylish, and animal-friendly outerwear.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.