Video: Elisabetta Canalis Reveals the Cold-Blooded Cruelty Behind Designer Accessories

For Immediate Release:
September 25, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Model Elisabetta Canalis is urging shoppers to stop buying bags, shoes, and belts made of the skin of exotic animals, revealing in a new video for PETA U.K. that animals are routinely skinned, repeatedly stabbed, and decapitated while they’re still alive to create accessories for fashion brands that include Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, and Hermès.

“Still think those shoes are worth this torture?” asks Canalis in the video. “There is nothing luxurious about exotic skins. Fashion is about creativity, not cruelty. So choose to be kind. Choose vegan leather, and keep exotic skins out of your wardrobe.”

A PETA Asia investigation shows that slaughterhouses that supply luxury fashion brands electroshock crocodiles and shove metal rods into their heads in an attempt to scramble their brains, and nails are driven into snakes’ heads while they’re still conscious. A video exposé also revealed that workers on a farm that supplies Gucci threw live lizards, struck them with machetes, and made multiple attempts to behead the animals.

Forward-thinking companies are meeting the growing demand for sustainable, animal-friendly products by offering vegan leather options made from pineapples, mushrooms, apples, cacti, and other materials. Brands such as Chanel, Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham, Burberry, HUGO BOSS, Vivienne Westwood, and Calvin Klein are all free from exotic skins. PETA is calling on Hermès, LVMH, Armani, Gucci, and Prada to join them.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.