PETA Asks Jane Birkin to Call Out Hermès for Animal Cruelty
As the inspiration for the Birkin bag, Jane Birkin finds herself a target for PETA. (Photo: Getty Images)
It’s developed a reputation for its confrontational ways, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is using a gentler approach in its latest campaign to end animal cruelty in the fashion industry.
In a video just released on its website, the organization takes aim at Jane Birkin, the British 1970s actress and singer whose husband was the late French singer Serge Gainsbourg. She is now best known in the United States as the namesake of the mega-popular Birkin bag by Hermès. PETA’s gripe with the company is its use of ostrich leather for the bag. Preparing the hide of an ostrich involves cruel and unusual practices, it says.
PETA argues that the making of the Birkin bag means raising ostriches in squalor and unthinkable discomfort until they’re a year old, then turning them upside down in a medieval-sounding device called a “stunner” and slitting their throats. The skin of the ostrich gives the bag its trademark texture, with a pattern of raised whorls in the leather.
In a video produced by PETA — which it calls a parody — a cartoon version of the head of the young Birkin is superimposed on that of a young ostrich. Footage is shown of the bleak life cycle of the ostrich in a “dirty feedlot,” where it lives until it is old enough to be taken to slaughter. The dreary scene plays out to the tune of some of Birkin’s French recordings.
PETA has sent the video directly to Birkin — and made the gesture public — in the hope that it will encourage the actress, now 69, to take a stand. It has called on her to cut her ties with Hermès in an attempt to stop the bag from being produced and save every “sensitive young ostrich [that] endured a miserable life and a terrifying death.”
This is not Birkin’s first brush with controversy over animal cruelty — nor her first encounter with PETA. Last year, Birkin did request that Hermès remove her name from the bag, after an investigative report by PETA revealed that crocodiles and alligators were being inhumanely slaughtered to make another version of the handbag, according to Vogue UK.
A statement from the company read, “Jane Birkin has expressed her concerns regarding practices for slaughtering crocodiles. Her comments do not in any way influence the friendship and confidence that we have shared for many years. Hermès respects and shares her emotions and was also shocked by the images recently broadcast.”
In response, PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, publicly thanked Birkin for parting ways with the French fashion label. But later that year, Hermès compromised by “demanding that all of its suppliers comply with the Best Management Practices for Louisiana Alligator Farming document,” according to Vogue UK. The company promised better conditions for animals and slaughterhouse employees, and reached an agreement with Birkin. She agreed to keep her name attached to the bag.
PETA was obviously disappointed, and said in a statement, “We believe Ms. Birkin will come to realize that her good name does not belong on a bag made from the cruelly obtained skins of factory-farmed wildlife.”
This time, PETA hopes Birkin will let her affiliation with Hermès expire for good. The company said, “Jane should seize this opportunity to disassociate herself from Hermès, before her name becomes as synonymous with cruelty to animals as that of Cruella de Vil.”
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