PHOTOS OF THE DAY

PETA "cops" were out in force at the Sundance Film Festival, making arrests for fashion felonies. Anyone wearing wool, leather, exotic skins, or fur saw the light. A flashing blue one, that is.

The crime: Ripping off an animal

The punishment: A public scolding

The penance: Buying a coat that didn't claim a life

The best show in Vegas last week wasn't in a casino—it was on the sidewalk on Las Vegas Boulevard. Luck was a lady leopard (and a cow and a snake) when PETA's "showgirls" stripped down on The Strip to reveal their animalistic bodypaint.

Crowds flocked to the ladies like they were the hottest blackjack table, posing for pictures and scooping up information about how animals raised or trapped for their skin suffer.

With the flurry of flashbulbs now over and loads of leaflets distributed, it's a safe bet that any animal skins the passersby will be flaunting from now on will be as fake as an Elvis impersonator.

You and animals both win when you choose animal prints, not animal skins.

Reese Witherspoon left many people shell-shocked when she was spotted carrying a reptile handbag. The Legally Blonde star's python-skin purse has been legally banned from being sold in California since 1970.

PETA immediately rushed Reese the video exposé that her Walk the Line co-star Joaquin Phoenix narrated, showing how reptiles used for clothing and accessories have their heads nailed to trees, are often skinned alive, and can languish for days before dying. Reese's camp instantly responded to us, saying that Reese was dismayed to learn that the bag was made of real snakeskin and promised never to carry it again.

Reese said that she was grateful for the information we had sent her, and we were so appreciative that she bagged the bag that we sent her flowers as a thank-you. It's good timing, too: Her upcoming movie This Means War co-stars Laura Vandervoort, who just shot a naked exotic-skins ad for PETA, so now those two can slink down the red carpet together rocking mock croc and fake snake. For a chance to win your own stylin' faux-snakeskin bag from Urban Expressions, click here!

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Toronto Fashion Week is all about the clothes, but one star was there in the flesh—hers. With her naked body painted to resemble a lizard's skin, Laura Vandervoort, of Smallville and V fame, stars in a new ad for PETA (shot by photographer Nick Saglimbeni) that she unveiled at Toronto Fashion Week while asking her fellow Canadians to shed exotic skins from their wardrobes.

Laura first appeared as a reptile in V, but this time around, she reprised her role as a lithe lizard to help protect the animals from being killed for their skins. "Three or four alligators have to die for one purse," she said in an exclusive interview from the photo shoot. "They nail the snake's head to a tree while it is still alive and peel its skin off. Because they are cold-blooded creatures, they take that much longer to die, so they suffer that much longer. … [Y]ou wouldn't skin your dog to wear to an event, to go out on a date, just for a status symbol. So please, have some compassion for animals."

To see behind-the-scenes video footage from Laura's photo shoot and enter to win a faux-snakeskin bag, check out her full PETA feature.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

While fashion designer Victoria Beckham, aka "Posh Spice," has vowed that none of her collections will ever include a stitch of fur, for which we thank and praise her, she has been silent on the subject of whether or not her new handbag collection will contain the skins of crocodiles, snakes, and other reptiles killed for fashion. And with the fashion diva's New York City runway show coming up this weekend, even the New York Daily News called her out for keeping mum on PETA's inquiries.

Alligator:© Dean Perrus/Dreamstime.com, Handle:© Luminis/Dreamstime.com, Zipper:© iStockPhoto.com

In a recent letter to Beckham, PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews described the horrors of the exotic-skins trade as shown in a PETA video narrated by Academy Award nominee Joaquin Phoenix and described how farmed reptiles are beaten over the head before being skinned alive. Snakes are either nailed to trees or poles by their heads or have water forced down their throats to loosen their skin before they, too, are skinned alive.

Beckham has stated that her bags adhere to the guidelines set forth by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), but PETA explained that CITES aims only to prevent a species from going extinct and has nothing to do with the atrocious ways in which animals are confined and killed.

Bags, belts, shoes, and watchbands made from high-fashion pleather abound, so there's never been a better time to give leather and exotic-animal skins the boot. In the meantime, we'll keep doing our best to get Posh to dump the croc.

Written by Alisa Mullins

According to a statement on its website, athletic behemoth Adidas has sworn off the skins of exotic animals—including crocodiles, snakes, sharks, and fish—joining compassionate companies such as Nike and Cole Haan, H&M, Overstock.com, and Victoria's Secret that rock the mock croc. Adidas also refuses to use fur or wool from sheep who were mulesed in any of its shoes or clothing. 
 

Like many animals used for their skin, snakes are often skinned alive, sometimes after being nailed to a tree.

 
We applaud Adidas for making great strides for so many animals, and look forward to the day when all its footwear is faux.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

If you were the governor of a state struggling in the economic downturn and you had $100,000 to spend, what would you do with it? Restore programs cut from schools? Aid homeless shelters? Or promote alligator-skin golf shoes? Florida's budget currently includes about $100,000 a year to market alligator skin, but Gov. Rick Scott wants to put the money to better use. "The state shouldn't be in that business," he said.

Agreed. Really, no one should be in that business. Alligator farmers raid marshes and steal the eggs. Trying to save their children, mother alligators risk their lives jumping into the farmers' boats. On farms, alligators are piled on concrete slabs in tiny stagnant pools and are often used in "petting zoos" and shows until they are large enough to kill for their skin. 

A PETA undercover investigation of a Florida alligator farm documented gruesome slaughter methods. One person stood on the animal's mouth, and one stood on the tail, while a third attempted to chisel through the spinal column with a pointed instrument and hammer. It took many blows for the chisel to break through the vertebrae, and even then, the spinal cord wasn't completely severed. It can take around two hours for an animal slaughtered this way to die. Another common slaughter method is beating alligators to death with baseball bats.

Even if Florida fails to cut the industry's funding, you can cut its funding by refusing to buy exotic skins and complaining to the manager if you see exotic skins on store shelves.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

I've got vegan pumpkin pie on the brain, but over at London's Daily Mirror newspaper, humble pie is on the menu today. The newspaper has issued an apology and a retraction over a story that it made up last month alleging that PETA was planning to pour animal blood on Victoria Beckham (aka Posh Spice) because she uses exotic skins in her line of handbags.

Writes the newspaper, "There was never any truth in this story which we retract completely. We apologise to PETA for the harm that our story has caused them. We have agreed to make a donation to PETA and to pay their legal costs."

Now that this little misunderstanding has been cleared up, hopefully Beckham will watch the video that PETA UK sent her showing how alligators are beaten to death with baseball bats and snakes are skinned alive so that their hides can be turned into accessories. I'm sure that if she does, she'll quickly realize that there's nothing "posh" about torturing animals for fashion.

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

A photo essay in the September issue of Harper's Bazaar features celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe—whose catch phrase is "I die"—being knocked off by various designers. We were struck by how easily the photo in which infamously furry Project Runway judge Michael Kors "bags" Zoe could be mistaken for a PETA ad:

I thought PETA had the market cornered on using corpses to highlight the fact that fur—and all animal skins—are dead, as in this spooky PETA ad featuring former Twin Peaks star Sheryl Lee:

Thanks, Michael, for helping make the case for us. Maybe this is the first step toward bagging fur and exotic skins.

Written by Alisa Mullins

Here's "The Situation": Sexy Jenni "JWoww" Farley of Jersey Shore fame has launched her new clothing line, Filthy Couture. No word yet on whether or not it'll include Snookits, but PETA members everywhere united in a resounding fist pump when JWoww's camp confirmed that Filthy Couture is free of fur and exotic skins.

Perhaps this headline will be coming soon to a newspaper near you: "PETA Implants JWoww in 'Rather Go Naked' Campaign." Would you like to see that become a reality?

Written by Karin Bennett