Condé Nast Goes Public With Fur Ban After Activists Target Executives

Condé Nast has gone public with a ban on the use of animal fur in editorial and advertising content across its publications, which include magazines like Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair.

The move follows months of aggressive campaigning by the grassroots activist organisation The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, which took its fight directly to the homes of Condé Nast executives and their business associates. The group said it has staged more than 100 such protests, picketing executives where they live while blasting graphic details of the fur trade through megaphones and holding up bloody imagery.

A Condé Nast spokesperson said that the company’s values and guidelines have restricted the use of new animal fur for years.

But until recently, the company was reluctant to publicise this, said PJ Smith, director of fashion policy at Humane World for Animals, who has been engaging with Condé Nast on the topic for the last year or so. “While [executives] said it would be rare to see fur in their pages anymore, they didn’t want to put out a public statement,” he said.

That appears to have changed after the latest spate of activist protests, with a statement on the fur ban appearing on the company’s sustainability website after a recent update. New fur products will not appear in the company’s titles, barring defined exceptions that cover things like byproducts of subsistence and indigenous practices.

Marc Jacobs made a similar move last year, going public with its own fur ban after it was targeted by CAFT activists in a campaign the designer described as “bullying.”

In many ways, the companies are behind the times. Many luxury companies have had public fur bans in place for years now, with Gucci’s famous declaration that fur is “not modern” now nearly a decade in the rear view.

Still, public statements by big industry players matter, according to campaigners.

“Vogue and Condé Nast have long dictated what trends are in and out of fashion,” Smith said in a statement. “When a trendsetter like Vogue says fur is out, it helps create a new cycle for what is acceptable and humane in a modern world.”

Learn more:

Big Brands Banned Fur. Why Is It Back on the Runway?

The luxury sector is turning to a roster of alternatives, from synthetics to styling tricks and innovation to tap into a resurgence in consumer appetite for fluffy fashions.