BFC’s blanket ban on exotic animal skins for London Fashion Week 2025 is trailblazing: Others from the Big 4 to follow?

Clearly not a knee-jerk decision, cruelty-free fashion has been on the vision board since as far back as 2018, when a ban on fur was promised at the time by BFC chief executive, Carol Rush. London fashion went essentially fur-free, starting December 2023. 7 years on, the ball has finally been set to roll on a more wholistic approach on the sentiment, the freshest chapter of which will be debuting, come February 2025.

For circuits as established and mammoth as this, it is hard to articulate how much of a real impact, ‘peer pressure’, if we were to put it in those terms, would have in how the other players of the ‘Big 4’ play their cards — namely New York Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and Milan Fashion Week. All eyes stay on Paris and Milan in particular, given recent trends.

For context, Paris Fashion Week’s Hermès spring-summer 2025 show, held earlier this year on September 29, featured exotic animal skins. The same was stormed by 3 PETA activists who staged quite the procession before being unceremoniously escorted out by security. The show proceeded as planned.

What domino effect, if any, this groundbreaking decision by the BFC will have only time will tell. But animal rights activists the world over have much cause for celebration. Dr. Charlotte Regan, a wildlife campaign manager at World Animal Protection in the United Kingdom, shed light on why the recent developments represent a watershed moment. “Millions of animals continue to suffer and die for fashion when there are so many innovative and exciting animal-friendly materials designers and clothing companies can choose to create with instead”, she explained in a byte to The Guardian.

With fur and exotic skins traversing the last mile of the journey between exclusive to excluded, PETA and other animal activist organisations are now shifting their focus to the use of wild bird feathers in fashion. “With both fur and now wild animal skins banned from London Fashion week, our attention turns to the use of wild bird feathers in fashion. We look forward to working with the British Fashion Council on the last step of their journey to being a completely wildlife-free event”, Regan shared.

Do you think this newly descended era in global fashion is here to stay?