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Press Release, 9 October 2003
TOMORROW’S DESIGNERS REJECT FURAwards ceremony celebrates youth and ideas in Paris Fashion Week
On that evening (22h00 to midnight), invited guests will be attending the Grand Prize awards ceremony of the first international DESIGN AGAINST FUR competition. Held at the famous Hotel Plaza-Athénee, situated in the heart of Paris’ fashion district, the ceremony will be held in the presence of Princess Catherine Aga Khan, and other distinguished guests. The Fur Free Alliance, an international coalition of some 35 leading humane and conservation organisations representing tens of millions of supporters worldwide, launched its international poster design competition in January 2003, challenging art schools and art students from around the world to find innovative and inspired ways to convey the message that ‘Fur does not belong in the 21st Century and the use of fur and fur trim should be obsolete. The killing of animals for their fur is cruel, unnecessary and wrong in the modern age.’ Response to the competition proved overwhelming, with students from across North America, continental Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland participating in the FFA’s inaugural contest. Worldwide, more than 500 poster designs were entered into competition. Judging took place in New York, Milan and London, with leading professionals of the fashion and advertising community evaluating designs during the regional heats. Nine international finalists were selected as a result, one of which – the eloquent and moving ‘Size 38’ – went on to claim the 2003 DESIGN AGAINST FUR International Grand Prize.
The winner, French student Nicolas Poitou, attending the Institut Saint-Luc de Tournai in Belgium, will receive his US $5,000 prize at the Plaza-Athénee awards ceremony. Of equal significance to the event’s Paris Fashion Week timing is its choice of venue: it was from the Plaza-Athénée 15 years ago that Princess Catherine and her late husband, UN statesman Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, launched their first, landmark campaign to expose the cruelties of the fur trade. The weight of evidence presented on that occasion proved so shocking that countless celebrities and members of the public renounced the wearing of fur for good. Since then, however, the industry has staged something of a comeback, investing heavily in PR marketing strategies that seek to turn its slogan, ‘Fur is Back’ into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Judging from this year’s competition entries, however, the designers of tomorrow have very different views about fur. Says Mark Glover of FFA affiliate, Respect for Animals: “We have been thrilled with the response we have received to the DESIGN AGAINST FUR competition – the quality of the entries was fantastic… The fur trade is an appallingly cruel industry and the students’ posters reflected this suffering in many ways.” Aside from blatant cruelty, many students also chose to slam the fur industry for treating sentient animals as no more than an inanimate resource. This is particularly evident in Nicholas Poitou’s winning ‘Size 38’ and ‘Barcode’ by UK student Daniel Howton. Dr. John Grandy, Senior Vice-President of FFA affiliate the Humane Society of the United States says: “DESIGN AGAINST FUR has been an outstanding success, not least of all because it has given student designers a forum for expressing their views about fur. It is gratifying that these young people – some of whom may be future stars of the fashion and design worlds – find the use of fur so outmoded and morally repugnant.”
Equally impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm of the student designers was Jeanne Marchig, Founder and Chairman of the Marchig Animal Welfare Trust, who announced that she would sponsor a special award for particularly meritorious runners up. This year’s winner, Daniel Howton for ‘Barcode’, will receive the US $1,000 Marchig Award during the Plaza-Athénee ceremony. “This striking design,” says Marchig, “gives the public, which has been lulled into believing that fur has become morally and socially acceptable again, a graphic reminder of the true suffering behind the consumer barcode. The DESIGN AGAINST FUR competition also serves to highlight the industry’s devious marketing strategies – particularly its efforts to tout fur among young people – for example, through flooding the market with fur trim.” The awards ceremony dress code at the Plaza may be rigorously ‘No Fur’ but the FFA, says Barry Gilbert-Miguet, who heads its secretariat in Geneva, “aims not to preach to the converted, but to provide the facts that will persuade fur wearers to turn their backs on fur of their own free will.” Princess Catherine Aga Khan, President of the Bellerive Foundation, is herself symbolic of such changing attitudes: “I have worn fur in the past… until the day my eyes were opened to the torture and pain caused by frivolity… Fashion is about moving with the times – as well as evolving moral, ethical and aesthetic perceptions. On this basis, the fur industry – and all those who persist in sponsoring it – is as cruelly anachronistic as their produce is outmoded.”
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