PHOTOS: PETA’s Retrospective of Naked Ads for Fashion Week
Just a block away from Fashion Week activities, PETA exhibited its sexy ad campaigns from over the years at China’s famous 798 Art Zone.
PETA’s and our affiliates’ “Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads were prominently featured in the exhibit. In 1998, The Go-Go’s were the first to appear in the ads, and since then, celebrities such as Annie Yi, Pamela Anderson, Joanna Krupa, Kim Basinger, P!nk, Penélope Cruz, and many others have stripped down for the cause. The exhibit also featured the iconic “Ink, Not Mink” series—starring the likes of Chester Bennington and Jeff Jiang.
The ads were shot by some of the world’s most notable photographers, including Chen Man, Greg Gorman, Yin Chao, Steven Klein, and Mary McCartney.
These ads, along with PETA’s exposés, have had a massive impact on the fashion industry. Over the years, we’ve seen more and more designers drop fur from their lines.
On fur farms in China—the world’s top fur exporter, investigators have witnessed and documented that foxes are electrocuted, dogs are bludgeoned to death, raccoon dogs are skinned alive, and rabbits are forced to live inside cramped, filthy cages before finally being strung up and skinned—sometimes while still alive.
The globalization of the fur trade has made it impossible to know where fur comes from. Animal skins move through international auction houses and are purchased by and distributed to manufacturers around the world. Finished goods are often exported. Even if a fur garment’s label says that it was made in a European country (where farms are little better and legislation to protect animals on fur farms is still woefully inadequate), the animals were likely raised and slaughtered elsewhere—possibly on an unregulated Chinese fur farm.
The only way to prevent the almost unimaginable cruelty that animals endure on fur farms is never to wear any fur. If you ever see a shop selling fur, speak out!
