ARE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE POLITICALLY INCORRECT?
No element of fashion has provoked more anger over the years than the use of animal fur. Some of the animal-rights movement’s earliest campaigns, dating back to the 1970s, involved actions against fur-wearing women (some of whom had their fine mink coats splashed with red paint). Animal rights activists won another victory this very week, when Gucci announced it would be phasing real fur out of its collection. Gucci’s president, Marco Bizzarri, said the move demonstrated “our absolute commitment to making sustainability an intrinsic part of our business.”
It’s not difficult, of course, to make the case that a $41,000 embroidered mink coat is a luxury, and not worth that animal’s death. Just don’t ignore the rest of the story: First, that coat employed Italian artisans for 90 hours just to complete the intarsia embroidery. Second, the best mink today comes from the U.S. and Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, where the mink industry consists of highly regulated family farms. For the Danes, mink is sustainably integrated into the economy: the animals are fed fish bycatch and leftover meat from other industries, raised in clean and healthy environments, and are put down painlessly with carbon monoxide. All parts of the animal are used for animal feed and even biofuel—a modern update of the indigenous practice of respecting the animal by making good use of every part of it. In other words, phasing out mink harvesting might save animals, but it does nothing for sustainability. The two are not the same, and it’s high time people stop using one to sell the other.
In fact, if you stop to ponder those indigenous customs, questions only multiply. Should native people suddenly abandon their traditions in order to comply with Western vegans’ morals? Should the Nomadic Sami tribe in Scandinavia stop hunting reindeer and start making polyester-fill puffy coats? Should Chinese families stop making silk and start working in rayon factories? For that matter, should African shoemakers stop using leather from local springbok, nile perch, and overpopulated Kudu, and turn to Asian pleather? If they stop hunting these animals, what will they eat? Will the vegan community send them care packages of vitamin B and cookbooks that incorporate locally foraged legumes?
Fashion’s Bi-Polar Future | Craftsmanship Quarterly, Fall 2017
During a New York Fashion Week show, a model for Livari walked the runway in a skirt made of leather made of the skin of fish from the Amazon. The incident provoked animal-rights protests, even though the skin is a byproduct of fish caught for food. The fish leather fetches a higher price for villagers than the skin’s customary use: farm animal feed. photo courtesy of Livari
“As a Western society, we should be careful about dictating to other communities about how best to sustain their lives,” says Tabitha St. Bernard, co-founder of the new responsible fashion label Livari. “There are people who just don’t have the luxury of not eating meat at all.” St. Bernard now lives in New York City, but her childhood in Trinidad & Tobago informs her work as a fashion activist. “I’m a woman of color and I grew up poor,” she says. “I welcome discussions with vegans about how to make our line more responsible, but Livari is not a vegan line.”
Just this year, during New York Fashion Week, a Livari model walked the runway in a skirt made of fish leather, a byproduct of the native Amazon Pirarucu fish caught for food. When tanned in a chromium-free process for fashion, the fish leather fetches a higher price for villagers than using it for animal feed. “The fact that it’s creating an industry and helping people feed themselves is for me a priority,” St. Bernard says.
^ From above linked article.....