“Somebody’s moral is somebody else’s life”. While PETA attacks Louis Vuitton on ostrich leathers, the CEO of the French fashion house, Michael Burke, underlines the extremism of these associations, accusing them of not accepting dialogue. He does it in a wide-ranging interview published on Business of Fashion. In it, without explicitly referring to PETA, Burke asks a rather uncomfortable question. He puts it in general, but the reference to extreme-animalist acronyms is obvious: “Do you really want an entire supply chain to disappear? Making thousands of small businesses disappear: is this what you want?”.
If somebody’s morality is somebody else’s life
“When there are extremists who take the conversation in hand, there is no dialogue. It always ends with a prohibition order. And this is very rarely productive. In the vast majority of cases, it’s much better to have an argument,” says Burke. Who points out that Louis Vuitton can, too, commit to doing almost anything that is required of it. But in doing so, only a very few small companies in its supply chain would survive. So: “Which alternative?”. Here it is: “Cooperation, to come to reasonable reductions on various products that we should no longer use, and to allow our supply chains and small brands to continue to survive”. Otherwise, there would be “hundreds of thousands of jobs lost for what? Somebody’s morality is somebody else’s life” concludes Louis Vuitton’s CEO.
PETA attacks Vuitton
It so happens that, while the interview with Burke comes out on Business of Fashion, PETA attacks LV for the alleged mistreatment that ostriches would suffer, of which the brand then uses leather (in the photo, from it.louisvuitton.com, a Vuitton ostrich backpack). According to what Fashion United UK reports, PETA has sent a letter to Louis Vuitton detailing this accusation in its own way. The goal, put pen on paper by animal rights activists, is to force Louis Vuitton to align itself with those other brands that have banned furs and exotic leathers.
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