American Classic decides to ban angora

French fashion brand American Vintage has made a decision to ban angora from all its future collections and has announced this on interpersonal media. Already two years ago, animal rights organisation PETA experienced criticised the brand’s make use of angora and revealed just how much angora rabbits undergo when their fur can be harvested.

“We held many online activities, bombarded the company’s public media posts with remarks, urged supporters to call its headquarters and customer support with complaints, protested exterior its stores in major cities around the world, distributed leaflets and posters, and moved a lot more than 320,000 compassionate supporters of PETA and our affiliates to e-mail the business with a phone to ban angora,” remembers the animal rights organisation.

Nowadays, according to its own account, PETA does cartwheels following announcement that American Vintage will join a huge selection of other makes like Gucci, Calvin Klein, Burberry and Alexa Chung and prevent selling products with angora and no longer work with angora in potential collection.

In a letter signed by founder Michaël Azoulay and submitted on Instagram, American Vintage recounts its version of events and explains how the brand - after accusations by animal rights groups regarding the mistreatment of angora rabbits - mandated independent external auditing companies to inspect the farms of its manufacturers, completed regular inspections of these farms, obtained guarantees from their website to sign an ethical charter and personally visited creation sites to verify the treatment of the angora rabbits.

“Taking a completely transparent procedure, we then shared these benefits. Unfortunately, this didn't stop the slanderous campaigns connecting our manufacturer to shocking photographs and videos pass on by these associations - images that do not even entail our producers,” remembers American Vintage.

The brand talks of “written and verbal confrontations” by animal legal rights organisations: “Our employees receive threats and insults each day. Posted video clips associate us with animal assassins.”

American Vintage took suitable measures: “Confronted with this daily pressure, we will not allow our personnel to undergo such incredible violence while awaiting a transition that can't be made immediately. Subsequently, we have made a decision to accelerate the changeover that we previously initiated, concerning angora development,” confirms Azoulay.

Thus, the brand can replace angora simply by a (yet) unnamed “alternative material… only simply because respectful of animal welfare” starting with the autumn-winter 2021-2022 collection. “We are wanting to present our fresh materials, which, rest assured, will uphold the same top quality and high textile benchmarks as our products,” concludes Azoulay.