All photos in the blog post are courtesy of Fashion Hayley. You can read her blog post on last night here.
Animal liberation protesters from PETA last night crashed the opening parade at Melbourne Spring Fashion Week. During the Rachel Gilbert section of the parade protesters carrying posters that read ‘Rachel Gilbert: Animal Killer,’ jumped on to the catwalk and stood up in the crowd singling out fur wearing attendees.
The show was stopped due to ‘security concerns’ much to the delight of the protesters who ended up being bombarded with abuse from certain members of the audience who called them ‘fat pigs,’ amongst many other names that won’t go into print here on Lady Melbourne.
I was sitting front row at the time and across from Micha from Raw Blog who was singled out by the protesters for wearing fur. Daniel from Fashionising sitting next to her tweeted, ‘No slim girls PETA?’ which has seen no end to being circulated via social media sites for it’s flippant tone and reference to plus size in climate where the issue is hot property. A follow up tweet from the man in question says ‘I’m polite but not politically correct,’ in reference to an interview he just gave to reporters on the subject. No doubt a ‘watch this space’ topic!
MSFW organisers announced to the crowd to remain seated and that the protesters had a right to be there peacefully. I can also report that no one was injured or harmed during the protest.
So now the background is out the way, what was the protest actually about?
Designer Rachel Gilbert although not showing it last night reportedly uses fur in her collections. PETA was there to make sure we all knew about it and to bring the issue of using fur in the fashion industry to the spotlight.
Standing the issue of fur, the wearing of it and it’s manufacturing aside, I do believe that we all have the right to protest and that sometimes disruption is the most powerful tool in your arsenal. What was equally as shocking as the parade being crashed last night was the torrid of abuse from some of the audience from fashion designers and industry stalwarts in particular. It was nothing short of ugly all round.
What do you think? Should PETA have taken a different approach to effect the workings of parts of the fashion industry?
