PETA France Takes Over Paris With Projections Targeting Olympic Partner LVMH
For Immediate Release:
June 24, 2024
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
As Paris prepares to host the Olympic Games Paris 2024, PETA France has shone a light on the cruelty perpetuated by Olympic partner LVMH’s use of exotic-animal skins by projecting a provocative video across some of the city’s most iconic landmarks—including Place Vendôme—during a star-studded Vogue World fashion event on Sunday attended by celebrities and fashion designers, including Pharrell Williams, men’s creative director for LVMH-owned brand Louis Vuitton.
Photo Credit: PETA France
The projection—which feature a crocodile dripping with blood, the message “Louis Vuitton: Drop Exotic Skins,” a parody of the official Olympic mascot, and shocking investigation footage of crocodiles being slaughtered—spotlighted the fact that torturing animals is neither chic nor in keeping with the Olympic values of friendship, respect, and excellence. The projections also illuminated the Eiffel Tower and the Futur Hôtel Louis Vuitton on the Champs-Élysées.
“If extreme cruelty to animals were an Olympic sport, Paris 2024’s premium partner LVMH—the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Fendi—might just take home a gold medal for selling the skins of violently slaughtered crocodiles, snakes, ostriches, and other wild animals,” says PETA Vice President for the U.K. and Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “The world is watching, and consumers should know that the Olympics are being sponsored with blood money. Every time you buy anything made of someone’s skin, you’re funding immense animal suffering.”
A PETA Asia investigation into slaughterhouses in Indonesia that supply LVMH shows snakes being inflated with water, bashed with hammers, and cut with razors while they were likely still conscious. PETA entities have also documented how workers in the fashion industry hack at crocodiles’ necks and shove metal rods down their spines, chop off conscious lizards’ heads with machetes, and electrically stun ostriches before slitting their throats in full view of their terrified flockmates. Animals raised and killed for fur are confined to tiny, filthy cages before they’re electrocuted, bludgeoned, gassed, or even skinned alive.
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 the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
