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At September’s Toronto International Film Festival, a PETA activist disrupted the premiere of Pharrell Williams’ animated documentary Piece by Piece to protest Williams’ use of fur and exotic skins as Louis Vuitton’s creative director. Unlike Chanel and Gucci, Louis Vuitton has not phased out fur, and the animal rights organization was raising its objections.
Pharrell responded to the activist by saying, “You’re right, you’re right, God bless you,” and encouraged the audience to applaud her. The house continues to use fur. (Williams and Piece by Piece distributor Focus Features declined to comment.)
While focused on Williams’ fashion work, the moment highlighted a crossroads point for the entertainment world too. Several movies this season specifically used vintage or vegan fur — including Angelina Jolie’s Maria Callas biopic Maria and Selena Gomez’s trans-themed dramatic thriller Emilia Pérez — opting out of the material that requires the raising or trapping of animals. But not all productions were on board, and even vintage and vegan fur raise questions about deploying the material as a shorthand for luxury.
“It’s a tricky subject, isn’t it?” says three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell.
A reluctance to raise and kill exotic animals for luxury purposes has been growing both among the public and celebrities. A 2022 survey found that 73 percent of Americans are at least “a little concerned” about the use of animal fur in apparel. Natalie Portman asked that no furs be used for her wardrobe in her 2018 vehicle Vox Lux, and Joaquin Phoenix, like Portman a known vegan, registered his fur objections on his period epic Napoleon; the faux kind was used instead.
In 2018, Meghan Markle wedding photographer Alexi Lubomirski started Creatives4Change, mobilizing Jennifer Aniston, Kate Winslet and others to shun fur, feathers and exotic skins in their work. And Disney Studios has banned the use of real fur across TV and movie productions since 2017. Some members of the costume design community have also been told by Disney not to depict fur at all in their productions no matter the material.
The resistance comes as a result of a growing awareness about the cruel practices involved with farming and killing animals for their pelts. The trend is reminiscent of cigarette smoking, which was long featured in movies of all ratings until advocates in 2007 convinced the Motion Picture Association to consider smoking when rating films.
All this comes on the heels of much of the fashion world eschewing fur. A range of brands — from Armani to Hilfiger, Prada to Michael Kors — have stopped using fur, some for many years. In 2021, Kering Group eliminated fur across all luxury holdings, including Gucci, which had been fur-free since 2018; Bottega Veneta; and Saint Laurent, which debuted three films under its new production banner at Cannes.
The fur policy aligned with the attitude of the star of one of those movies. “Selena Gomez didn’t want to wear fur,” says Virginie Montel, costume designer for Emilia Pérez. Montel instead looked to the Saint Laurent archives for two faux fur pieces by creative director Anthony Vaccarello to depict the character’s “too much” aesthetic.
Meanwhile, for the Donald Trump origin story The Apprentice, costume designer Laura Montgomery procured an ’80s find from a Salvation Army fire sale to put on Ivana; she says she’d only use recycled fur.
“It definitely has become the thing where [the actors and I] have to have a conversation about it,” says costume designer Erin Benach of 2023 festival release The Bikeriders. She’s noticed some talent declining to wear fake fur, too, to avoid glorifying the material in a way that might spur purchases of the real thing.
Some animal rights activists say that re-use, while welcome, only solves the problem halfway. “Even vintage fur risks normalizing the idea of wearing animals,” says Lauren Thomasson, director of Animals in Film and TV at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
But costume designers also say they often find themselves with a dilemma — they want to be responsive to these new sensibilities while staying true to the reality of the characters, particularly those in period films. And in some cases, they say, fur can reflect a key character detail. Costume designer Charlese Antoinette, who often re-uses fur in her builds, recently rented a fox fur for Michael Stuhlbarg’s blustering Boston mobster in the contemporary heist movie The Instigators.
“[The coat] was full-on comedy — a comedic device — meant to make him feel ridiculous and look a little bit dated,” says Antoinette.
Antoinette says she understands the sensitivity surrounding the use. “But also at the same time, I don’t ever want to feel like I’m limiting my creativity,” she says. “Because if the faux fur doesn’t look as good, do I just not use the coat that’s real?” (With manufacturing and material advancements, many experts say vegan fur can look as plush and velvety as that which comes from actual animals.)
Powell, who says she always uses vintage fur — and only if necessary for the story — believes fur shouldn’t be removed entirely. That, she says, could compromise a film’s authenticity the way taking cigarettes out of a midcentury movie would. “I believe, in a film for adults, you can depict people in the past smoking, in the same way as you can depict people in the past wearing fur,” she says.
Pablo Larraín’s chronicle of Callas’ final days also exhibits the tension between sensitivity and authenticity. The filmmakers and Jolie believed that fur was essential to portray the renowned opera soprano. So that production, too, used vintage fur. “PETA helped us in the film by telling us that using used furs did not imply any kind of mistreatment because the skins were vintage,” says the film’s two-time Oscar-nominated costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini. PETA helped source some of the furs and leather in Cantini Parrini’s archive and has launched a campaign to broadcast the message. Jolie also worked with PETA to spread the word.
“By Angelina making the statement about the production of Maria, it’s sending a signal to every other production that might still [have the opportunity to] use vintage fur,” says PETA’s Thomasson. She emphasizes that PETA’s ultimate goal is for Hollywood to completely shift to vegan fur, but “we operate under a lot of nuance.”
A statement from PETA in the end credits of Maria also makes the vintage-fur point, though whether a casual filmgoer bombarded with fur images absorbs these signals is less clear. (Or if Netflix viewers will even make it that far, since the streamer famously launches into the next feature before the credits conclude.)
Perhaps the thorniest example this season comes in Anora, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner about a working-class escort (Mikey Madison) who takes to fur after falling into new fortune.
“Not mink,” she says as she luxuriates in an ostensibly higher-end Russian sable coat. Costume designer Jocelyn Pierce told fashion outlet Stylecaster that she custom-built the coat from real sable. Pierce would not comment for this story.
For its part, PETA says that faux fur not only is a preferred substitute but also can advance a film’s thematic goals. “We always want consumers to choose vegan faux fur,” says Thomasson. “If the real Maria Callas were alive today, we think she’d do the same.”
Fawnia Soo Hoo provided reporting for this story.
A version of this story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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