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When Anti-Fur Protesters Are at the Front Door
The designer Marc Jacobs said he was bullied into renouncing fur — which he claims his brand stopped using in 2018 — after activists targeted his employees.
Jessica Testa and
A new frontier has opened in fashion’s fur wars, as protesters targeted the homes of more than a dozen employees of Marc Jacobs in recent months, using signs, noisemakers and fake blood in an effort to force the designer to officially renounce the use of fur in his collections.
Over the weekend, Mr. Jacobs accused the protesters of “bullying” in a statement on Instagram, but averred: His brand “does not work in, use or sell fur, nor will we in the future.” He also emphasized that he had not used fur in any of his own brand’s collections since 2018.
“This organization has made it clear that they will not stop their violence toward Marc Jacobs unless they get the statement they want,” Mr. Jacobs wrote. “While I don’t condone the behavior of this organization, I will always do what I can to protect, honor and respect the lives and well-being of the people I work with.”
The organization referenced by Mr. Jacobs is the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, or CAFT, a group that selects targets and disseminates information and resources to anti-fur activists on the ground.
“We were ecstatic,” Matthew Klein, the executive director of CAFT USA, said of Mr. Jacobs’s statement, though he disputed the description of the protests as violent: “Home protest is protected by the First Amendment, and has a long and proud history of use by the labor and civil rights movements.”
According to Mr. Klein, CAFT has been protesting Marc Jacobs since June 2023 — a few months after the company collaborated on a runway show with the Italian brand Fendi.
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