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“Luxury” fashion shouldn’t cost animals an Armani and a leg. That’s why at the Giorgio Armani spring/summer 2025 fashion show—hosted in New York City to coincide with the opening of the designer’s new building on Madison Avenue—a PETA supporter disrupted the event with a message in behalf of animals violently killed for their skin.
Dressed in a reptile bodysuit, the protester urged Armani to ban wild-animal skins from his collections.
Why Is PETA After Armani?
Giorgio Armani banned fur and angora following hard-hitting PETA campaigns, but the brand continues to sell accessories—such as watchbands—made with reptile skins, despite having heard from PETA entities about the heinous cruelty within the industry. Farms often pack alligators into dank pools and confine crocodiles to crowded, barren concrete pits.
One PETA investigation revealed that workers crudely hack into alligators’ necks and try to scramble their brains with metal rods. Some animals were still conscious, flailing and kicking, even minutes after workers tried to kill them.
The Giorgio Armani 11 watch, released in 2022, was made in collaboration with Parmigiani Fleurier, a Swiss watchmaker known to source its alligator watchbands from Hermès, which was implicated in that same PETA investigation. Eyewitnesses found workers cutting open live reptiles and leaving them to bleed to death on farms that supplied skins to the brand.
PETA Asia investigations have also revealed that workers behead lizards and inflate snakes with water before skinning them, sometimes while they’re likely still alive.
Tell Giorgio Armani to Cut the Cruelty
In nature, baby alligators stay with their protective mothers for up to two years. Come courting season, these social animals perform “dancing” rituals to impress potential mates. Like all animals, reptiles suffer when humans abuse and hack them apart for fashion.
Forward-thinking companies are meeting the growing demand for sustainable, animal-friendly products by offering vegan leather options made from pineapple leaves, mushrooms, apples, cactus, and more. Please tell Giorgio Armani to do the same by banning animal skins:
