B = Blackglama Fur Coat
Author: Dan Mathews
Senior Vice President, PETA
A little context: you can read about the upcoming exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern? in our first Medium post. Dan Mathews’s presentation, B = Blackglama Fur Coat, was one of 26 in a daylong abecedarium exploring fashion as an expression of social and cultural currents, using all 26 letters of the alphabet as a yardstick.
We’re honored to share the transcript of this incisive, thoughtful short talk.
***
Dan Mathews: Hi. I’m Dan Mathews with PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals]. When PETA rose to prominence in the ’80s, the ad campaign that most strongly symbolized fashion’s disregard for animals was Blackglama’s “What becomes a legend most?” fur ad series. They were black-and-white ads with stars like Bette Davis and Diana Ross draped in mink coats. The series began in 1968 and remained very visible through the ’70s and ’80s. PETA spoke out against it and we sent videos of minks having their necks snapped to the celebrity models. Here is the transcript from an MTV News clip from 1989:
To wear or not to wear fur. It’s become one of the hot topics of the year, and the latest battle in this war pits animal rights advocates, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, against Blackglama, one of the nation’s largest fur producers, who are responsible for the slaughter of over four-and-a-half million minks a year. Liza Minnelli is one of the glamorous women Blackglama has used over the years in their “legend” campaign. But she’s also one of the people who have been persuaded by the activism of groups like PETA and changed their minds about wearing fur.
>> Minnelli: “What becomes a legend most? Death. That’s what you’re saying sitting there in a fur coat. That’s what you’re saying. But it didn’t occur to me then. It was—it’s my own stupidity. It’s my own insensitivity. And I’m sorry about it. I would take it back in a second.”
Mathews: Soon we developed our own ad series at PETA. In contrast to Blackglama’s ads with old school stars covered in mink, ours featured new style icons wearing nothing at all. The naked campaign actually started in the streets of Tokyo in 1992. Furriers staged an Asian Fur Expo but Japanese activists refused to protest because they said it was rude. So a pair of us from PETA went and said we were a stripper couple who flew in to take our clothes off outside the expo. We marched through the streets with a banner that said “We’d rather go naked than wear fur.” It turned into a mob scene and got people talking about animal rights not only in Japan but all around the world.
The reaction was so intense that we turned it into an ad for which we recruited Christy Turlington. Steven Klein shot this free of charge. Before this, anti-fur ads featured coyotes mangled in traps or foxes being anally electrocuted. Not many people could take this upsetting reality but a naked model making a statement? People not only loved it, they wanted a poster. The response from the fashion world was phenomenal at first. Patrick Demarchelier shot Naomi Campbell — naked — for PETA in Paris. Todd Oldham shot Cindy Crawford for the campaign, which put PETA on the cover of New York magazine during New York fashion week at the height of the supermodel era. Suddenly PETA’s imaged changed from “these people with spray paint” to “the group with the naked models.”
One activist suggested we change our name to Pimps for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Time Out New York dubbed PETA “so hip it hurt.” Fur sales plummeted. But as we all know, fashion trends change….
By the end of the ’90s, as the supermodel era waned, some models who swore off fur wore it again for a price. PETA took a lot of flack. One story showed Naomi Campbell swathed in a few hundred chinchillas with the headline “I’d rather go naked, then wear fur.” We learned that those who rely on fashion to make a living aren’t always reliable. We considered abandoning the campaign altogether. Instead we switched from models to rock stars. This is who people look more to for fashion tips anyway. Here is Pink’s billboard for PETA on 42nd Street:
The same ad was released to great fanfare by PETA affiliates across Europe, Asia, and in Australia. We also worked with stylish TV stars. Here is Taraji P. Henson in her naked ad, which she announced at a PETA party at Stella McCartney’s store. Standing with her that night was Tim Gunn, who allows no fur on Project Runway. Taraji even got producers on Empire to use fake fur.
So, what’s the impact of all of this? Every fall, furriers claim that fur is back, touting how many designers use it on runways. What they don’t say is that they pay for it to be on runways for visibility and that very little of it actually ends up in retail collections.
Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Vivienne Westwood, Tommy Hilfiger, and — just a few months ago — Giorgio Armani all banned fur. A recent economic report on China (the world’s largest fur manufacturer) stated that global demand for fur and leather has fallen so far that fur factories are now being operated by skeleton crews.
As for Blackglama, a few years ago I went to Oyster Bay to visit Peter Rogers, the ad man who created the old “What becomes a legend most?” ad series. We had a few drinks and a few laughs and he said he had no idea how animals suffered in the fur trade when he originally created the campaign. He tried not to think about it, like many people. Times change and he was thrilled that PETA has had such enduring success with our campaign.
But to the new generation, the whole fur issue is old fashioned. They’re avoiding leather now. I think it’s time to reinvent the campaign once more, maybe with the slogan “I’d rather bare skin than wear skin.”
Thank you.
