Kering Confirms Ban on Angora Following Talks With PETA U.K.

For Immediate Release:
April 27, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

PETA is hopping for joy after luxury fashion group Kering—owner of Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, and others—marked the Year of the Rabbit by banning the use of angora and rabbit felt across all its brands. To celebrate this move, PETA France is sending the company a rabbit-shaped vegan cake.

Gucci sparked outrage earlier this year after selling rabbit felt hats despite a 2021 fur ban, and now Kering has confirmed to PETA, a company shareholder, that “Kering’s implementation of the no-fur ban has been explicitly reinforced internally to ensure that no rabbit hair or skin is used by our brands.”

“Angora and rabbit felt are torture for these sensitive animals, whose fur is either torn out while they’re still fully conscious or shorn off after they’ve been electrocuted or their necks have been broken,” says PETA U.K. Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “We applaud Kering’s compassionate decision and urge the last remaining brands that still sell angora to follow its lead.”

A PETA Asia investigator visited almost a dozen rabbit farms in China, the source of 90% of the world’s angora, and found rabbits screaming in pain and terror as workers ripped their fur out. During this violence, rabbits’ feet are tightly bound and they’re suspended in the air or stretched across boards. Those who are sheared are inevitably wounded by the sharp cutting tools as they struggle desperately to escape. Because rabbits are prey animals, they become terrified very easily and fear being picked up, and they’re prone to heart attacks in stressful situations. One farmer said that 60% of the rabbits die after only one to two years.

Kering joins a long list of more than 400 brands and retailers, including Armani, Burberry, Chloé, Calvin Klein, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, and Lacoste, that have banned angora.

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.