Bloodied’ and ‘Skinned’ PETA India Director to Condemn Hermès Horror

Mumbai 30th November 2023 (GNI): “Hermès: Accessories to Murder” – that’s the message PETA India director Poorva Joshipura, wearing an alligator-skin costume and lying in a pool of blood, will send outside Hermès’ boutique on Friday, as she calls on the French fashion house to ban the use of alligators, crocodiles, and other exotic animals, who are tormented and killed to make the brand’s leather bags and accessories.

When:        Friday, 1 December, 12 noon to 1 pm
Where:       Near Jhaveri Honda, 312 Hanuman Building, Perin Nariman Street, opposite State Central Library, Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001

“Behind every Hermès handbag is a sensitive animal who was kept in filth and endured a horrific death, all to make a fleeting fashion statement,” Joshipura says. “PETA India is calling on Hermès to get with the times and use only sustainable, luxurious vegan materials that do not involve the torture and gruesome slaughter of animals.”

Joshipura’s action follows footage showing live reptiles being sawed open and left to bleed to death on a farm that supplied skins to Hermès. More revelations have since followed: an investigation released by Kindness Project and shared by PETA entities revealed that crocodiles on farms owned by Hermès were being kept in cramped, barren conditions and then mutilated and stabbed with a screwdriver.

PETA India notes that it takes three crocodiles to make just one Hermès bag and that many designers, including Mulberry, Victoria Beckham, Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel, Stella McCartney, and Burberry, have banned reptile skins from their collections.

Joshipura’s new book Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals Is Key to Human Existence has just been released by HarperCollins India. It sounds alarm bells for how our treatment of animals can harm humans. For instance, experts have warned that the use of snakes, crocodiles, or other exotic animals for fashion could fuel an epidemic. Her first book For a Moment of Taste: How What You Eat Impacts Animals, the Planet and Your Health was also published by HarperCollins India.

This news release is also available in Hindi here.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram. Ends GNI