Fashion professionals will no longer find clothing and accessories in fur or angora wool in the booths of the trade show Who's Next, the new edition of which is taking place tomorrow in Paris. WSN, the organizing company of the event, is also committed to supporting innovation, in particular “alternative, eco-responsible materials that protect against the cold”.
By Ludmilla Intravaia
This is a good news that PETA France welcomed last October on behalf of coyotes, foxes, mink, chinchillas, raccoon dogs and rabbits, whose exploitation by fashion is denounced by the animal rights association. At that time, WSN Développement, the company that organizes numerous trade fairs, such as Who's Next, Impact, Première Classe, Bijorhca, the international lingerie fair, Interfilière Paris or Traffic had just committed "to no longer featuring animal fur on the all its events, as of January 1, 2023".
“Fashion made from animal fur belongs to a bygone era” notes WSN in the press release, published on its website. "Concerned about being in tune with the expectations and evolution of our society", the event company explains that it has added the criterion of the material in the selection process of the brands exhibited at its shows, while delivering its definition of the term fur, as "any animal skin or part of skin to which hair, fleece or fur fibers are attached, in its raw or transformed state, excluding skins transformed into leather”. No fur, mink wool and angora wool, therefore, in the exhibitors booths at Who's Next, which opens its doors tomorrow at Porte de Versailles in Paris, until Monday January 23.
But you will still find leather, exotic leather, silk, feathers, horn, woolen skin and wool (except mink wool and angora wool), as WSN does not commit in banishing these materials causing suffering for many species, such as cows, calves, horses, lambs, goats, pigs, dogs and cats, to name only the sentient beings exploited in the leather industry, in all "more than a billion animals cruelly killed in the world", notes PETA France.
And if WSN is also committed "to encourage and promote all innovations, particularly those that propose alternative, eco-responsible materials that protect against the cold", without however referring in its press release to animal suffering generated by fashion, it is clear that the development of innovative materials, from a sustainable perspective but also the respect of non-human animals, is on the rise, particularly in biofabrication, as Le Boudoir Numérique regularly reports. The “2021 State of the Industry Report: Next Generation Materials” by the American NGO Material Innovation Initiative thus reveals that investments in next generation materials have doubled, worldwide, from 2020 to 2021, increasing from $425.5 million to $980 million. In all, 95 companies are working on these materials, as alternatives to leather, silk, wool, down and exotic skins, for the fashion, automotive and household goods industries.
And this is only the beginning of the fight for the unavoidable ethical revolution in fashion, driven by the activism of animalist associations and their supporters, finding a growing echo in public opinion. A change in the societal model in which fashion tech obviously has a fundamental role to play. Witness, for example, last November, the Vegan Wool Challenge launched by PETA USA offering 1 million dollars prize for the development of an innovative vegan wool "that is visually, texturally, and functionally akin to or better than sheep’s wool to the first entrant who creates such a material and has it adopted and sold by a major clothing brand.” The competition is open until July 28, 2023 (more info here).