02/22/24 Max Mara, go fur-free!
A powerful message at the start of Milan fashion week on a spectacular hot air balloon
- Today’s Max Mara fashion show was opposed by the biggest corporate campaign against fur
At the beginning of Milan Fashion Week and ahead of the upcoming Paris Fashion Week, the animal protection organisations Humane Society International, LAV and Fur Free Alliance, among which more than 50 members is also the association Animal Friends, joined forces to convince the luxury fashion brand Max Mara to stop using fur. With the message “Max Mara, go fur-free!” on a 25-meter high hot air balloon, which spectacularly flew over the headquarters of the fashion house in Italy, they invited Max Mara, whose fashion show is on the schedule today, to remove fur from their collections.
The #FurFreeMaxMara campaign is the largest corporate anti-fur campaign of all time, with tens of thousands of emails and calls to the company's phones, as well as actions on social media and at the company's retail locations. Animal protection organizations said that if the management of Max Mara could ignore the dialogue until now, their message from the sky could not be ignored now: "It is unimaginable that Max Mara has not seen the need to adapt to the demands of modern consumers for so long. Proposing more ethical fashion is imperative in a world characterized by numerous textile innovations and increasingly avant-garde competition."
The luxury fashion group was chosen because it is one of the last major fashion houses to use fur. It sells products with fox, raccoon and mink fur from China and Finland in its more than 2,500 stores in 105 countries. Animals whose fur is used by Max Mara spend their entire lives in tight cages, deprived of the opportunity to express their natural behaviour, only to be gassed or killed by anal electrocution.
Fur farming and processing are disastrous for the environment and pose a risk to public health. Waste and toxic chemicals from farms and tanneries can leak into the environment, where they are extremely harmful. Compared to other materials, fur has the highest greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram – for example, the carbon footprint of 1 kg of mink fur is 31 times that of cotton and 25 times that of polyester.
"Tens of millions of animals suffer on fur farms and die every year because of the global fur trade. Throwing away the fur is the only way to help the unfortunate animals who are experiencing the horrors of human vanity. It's time for Max Mara to stop using fur and become an example of compassionate fashion like many other brands have already done," said Animal Friends.
Most of the world's big fashion houses have already removed fur from their collections. Among them are Dolce & Gabbana, Saint Laurent, Valentino, Gucci, Versace, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga and Jimmy Choo. And the brands Hugo Boss, Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood have a long-standing policy against the use of fur.
Croatia is one of the 15 EU member states that protect martens, chinchillas and other fur-bearing animals by banning the breeding of animals for fur. Animal Friends urges everyone not to buy and wear products that contain fur, leather, feathers and silk, but to turn to ubiquitous ethical and ecological alternatives. Anyone can appeal to Max Mara to go fur-free via the website hsi-europe.org/furfreemaxmara.
