PETA to Hermes: Leather Isn’t a ‘Luxury’

How many crocodiles does it take to make a leather bag?

It sounds like the start of a really bad joke, but in a recent article, the chief executive for the French “luxury” goods group Hermes said, “It can take three to four crocodiles to make one of our bags so we are now breeding our own crocodiles on our own farms, mainly in Australia.” (emphasis added)

He then quipped, “The world is not full of crocodiles, except the stock exchange!”

Oh, ho ho, funny guy. If you weren’t ripping their skins off—sometimes while they are still alive and able to call out in distress—and turning them into overpriced purses, there would probably be plenty of crocodiles running around.

They did outlive the dinosaurs, after all, so my guess is that their survival instincts are pretty acute.

Here’s what PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews had to say:

The thought of purposely breeding and killing crocodiles for an outdated, overpriced handbag should make any fashionista’s skin crawl. If Hermes really wants to be a leader in the fashion industry, it should stop killing animals for cold-blooded vanity and use cruelty-free mock croc and fake snake instead. As Pink—who recently provided the voice of a computer-generated crocodile in PETA’s “Stolen for Fashion” commercial—says, “Killing animals for their skins is so disgusting that it doesn’t make me want to befriend designers who use them.

So how about this: Instead of breeding reptiles for fashion faux pas, watch “Stolen for Fashion,” then pull a switcharoo and start using stylish synthetics instead.

Written by Shawna Flavell