‘Get A Life’ is a hypocrisy Vivienne Westwood, it’s time for change.
An open letter to Vivienne Westwood
Dear Vivienne Westwood,
I have followed your brand for years. I have loved the wild and daring designs and the more simple, fashionable and monochrome creations. I fell in love with the brand early, and was thrilled to see more alternative punk-inspired fashion in the fashion world. But what was most important to me was your anti-fur stance. In a fashion world full of designers continually bringing real animal furs into their lines, you denounced fur and stuck with it. You stood your ground and created beautiful fur-free fashion and have stayed true in years since. I have your non-leather handbags and more of your jewellery than I’d like to admit for the sake of my bank account. But I feel that my love affair with your work has hit a severe road block.
I felt genuinely lucky to watch you give a talk in 2010 and see you tell the audience to “Get a life,” a term that has come to be a powerful catchphrase and mantra you spread to your followers. Not to mention the title of your online diaries and latest book, a collection of diaries. Stood in that talk, I was right there with you. Yes, get a life, go out and care about something, care about the environment, care about the world, make a difference.
I love seeing the Vivienne Westwood ‘Climate Revolution’, ‘I Am Not A Terrorist’ and ‘Save the Arctic’ T shirts promoting such important causes. You are truly using your platform in the public eye for good, but as much I want to support this, I struggle to avoid seeing the hypocrisy in espousing a message of fighting climate change, when the various Vivienne Westwood labels contain many items made with leather. Looking only briefly over your ranges it’s very easy to spot the many men’s and women’s shoes, belts and bags made with leather. There are some non-leather items too, the kind that I usually look for, but the amount of leather is overwhelming. I can’t help but question; if you can make great items with non-leather materials, and you want to be an eco-friendly company, why use leather at all?
I know that you are personally vegetarian, and have openly promoted vegetarianism as ethical as well as a way to combat climate change and save the planet. And you’re right, animal agriculture, particularly livestock (and particulaly cows) and their byproducts produces 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions that leads to climate change. Leather production itself has a large carbon footprint, as well as polluting the earth with a range of toxic substances.
This dichotomy has bothered me for a while, but the final instance that really made this stand out to me however came from a slightly different angle. I saw that you had come out with a new range of items using the “Get A Life” phrase and was excited to see what you’d put out. I saw a great looking range of bags with “Get A Life” emblazoned across them and was delighted momentarily, until I saw the item details.
“100% Leather.” I was shocked. Not that you’d released new leather bags, but that you’d chosen to tie these two things together, to put that message on a leather bag.
Writing “Get A Life” across a bag made of the skin of someone who had a life, and who had their life taken from them to make this very bag, the sheer hypocrisy of it was jarring. I could not, and still cannot see how putting the two together could have made sense. I can’t see the “Get A Life” phrase the same way.
If fur was taken out of your fashion labels permanently for ethical reasons, then why not go the whole ethical route and take out leather, and wool and silk too? All are unethical, and have negative effects on the environment too. What is the real difference between killing a cow for her skin and killing a mink for hers? We’re educated enough now to know that leather isn’t really a byproduct of the meat industry. And as a vegetarian, surely you would stand against the meat industry anyway, one would presume.
Believe me, I don’t presume to know the hard decisions involved in running a high-end fashion brand. I know that many customers will expect leather from high end fashion and see leather as synonymous with quality, but if you truly want to make a statement about climate change, what better way than to make your brand truly reflect that?
I’m writing this to implore you to truly put your values where your mouth is. To quit leather and continue to produce high quality non-leather items that are cruelty free. To tell people to “Get A Life” without taking the lives of any more animals.
I love your message and want to see more of it, but with a full ethical and responsible backing. Maybe I want too much, or maybe I just want you to be more of the ethical eco warrior I know you are.
Kindly yours,
Laura Callan, Bright Zine
This open letter was originally published in Bright Zine, Issue One.
