Her walk was poised, her outfit – crop top, tailored trousers, high heels – so on point that when Josie Knowles strutted down a London Fashion Week catwalk last month she could have passed for a model. That is, had it not been for the sign the Peta protester held saying “H&M: Wool is Bloody Cruel.” Still, as one social media commentator put it when praising her strut: “you cant tell me Peta didn’t know what they were doing when they hired this diva”.
Well, if you want to infiltrate a place, it helps to look like you fit in...
For the record, Knowles’s clothes were all vegan and secondhand; the trousers were Spacegirlz, a now defunct early 2000s label; her high-heeled boots were from the Peta prop cupboard.
Wonder why it's defunct?
One of the reasons Knowles’s catwalk moment engaged so many was because it felt unlikely that someone clearly steeped in fashion’s visual codes would also be prepared to protest against the industry so fiercely.
Knowles has never worked in fashion. She studied philosophy at university, went vegan after falling into an internet rabbit hole, appalled by what she saw about the treatment of animals. She interned at Peta for six months before she was hired there.
She came a little late to the party, but of course, activists never say 'Jon done!' and retire, do they?
Since 2023, activists have rushed the catwalks of top fashion shows including Burberry, Gucci, Hermès, Victoria Beckham and Fendi. Many of them have been young men and women who could pass for models themselves. Peta activists often blend in so well that before some recent catwalk ambushes, they have mingled with show-goers and even sat front row before leaping to action.
But Peta still protested because the organization is shifting emphasis. It’s now calling for the eradication of nearly all animal-derived fabrics including, perhaps most divisively, wool.out the dedication of the fannatic.
Wool. Which is obtained not through killing animals at all. Tough sell, you'd think, in these 'natural is better than artificial' days, but you'd reckon without the desire never to get a proper job nd to spend your life in student politics.
For a fashion world patting itself on the back for dropping fur, calls to ban wool have been met with “a breath of exasperation from some fashion insiders, and confusion from others” according to a Vogue Business piece which ran in response to the protests.
Many farmers, fashion brands and wool producers, meanwhile, maintain that they adhere to ethical standards. They flag social and environmental concerns inherent in abandoning wool production, and argue that – because sheep have been bred for generations to grow very thick fleeces – not shearing them would also be cruel.
Anyone else would see this as an insurmountable challenge, but no...
Some have also accused Peta of pushing synthetic fibres just when the environmental nightmare of polyester use needs to be abated, though Peta say that’s a false dichotomy. The Peta activists I spoke to were advocates for vegan plant-based alternatives such as bamboo, cotton, hemp and tencel.
Gen Z activists will be a big part of this. Having grown up with unfettered access to information online, Byrne says they are “less surprised than other generations when they learn that wool and leather are a product of cruelty”.
Imagine admitting that they have all this access to information, and yet they are dumber and more driven by emotion than other generations?
