Fast Fashion ESG Shortfalls

Readers of a certain age may recall seeing this hugely impactful – not to say controversial – image for the first time. Yona Lesger, a member of the V&A Research Department, reminds us in her January 2020 blog post of fashion photographer David Bailey shooting “this striking poster in 1984. The attention-grabbing slogan directly accuses fur-wearers, going beyond the usual narrative of the pain inflicted on animals. The work was commissioned in protest against the fur trade by Lynx in 1984 and was part of a campaign for Greenpeace. Mark Glover, a co-founder of Lynx, believed the campaign had a phenomenal impact as one of the very first to adopt a consumer-facing strategy. It was the ‘Dumb Animals’ campaign that persuaded people to change their perception of fur from something glamourous to something grotesque and immoral.”