Melbourne Fashion Week (M/FW) will introduce a ban on feathers for 2024, adding to its existing policy that bans fur and wild animal skin since 2018.
It has now become the first fashion event of its kind in the world to ban three wildlife-sourced materials.
World Animal Protection and Collective Fashion Justice have welcomed the move, which was announced at a M/FW event on the Wildlife-Free Future of Fashion.
“Feathers often find their way into fashion through extremely cruel practices which undermine the most basic principles of animal welfare,” World Animal Protection head of campaigns Suzanne Milthorpe said.
“With this new policy, Melbourne is setting the stage for a future where fashion and ethics go hand in hand, cementing a global standard for the industry which truly aligns with public expectations.
“We hope to see more brands and fashion week organisers follow Melbourne’s lead and embrace innovation over exploitation by keeping wildlife materials out of their collections.”
This announcement comes after a new report, Feathers are the New Fur, uncovered mislabelling practices in the industry.
According to the report, independent textile analysis showed that genuine animal feathers were inaccurately labelled as ‘faux’ or ‘synthetic’ by The Iconic, Selfridges, Boohoo and ASOS.
It also claimed that fashion brands Nordstrom, Cettire, Net-a-Porter and Revolve were selling garments with clear distinguishing features of genuine feathers, mislabelled as 'faux feathers’.
ASOS have since strengthened its material testing policies, while The Iconic has put a decorative feather ban in place - to be implemented from 2024.
“Our polling has repeatedly shown that the use of wild animals in fashion is becoming unacceptable in the eyes of the consumer,” Milthorpe said. “This makes the mislabelling by big fashion brands a blatant breach of consumer trust, many of whom may be trying to shop cruelty-free.”
Collective Fashion Justice founding director Emma Hakansson commended The Iconic for banning all decorative feathers from next year, calling it progressive.
“Brands can choose to spend big money tracing their supply chains in an effort to reduce animal welfare risks, or they can implement strategic policies that help to eliminate animal suffering from the value chain entirely,” Hakansson said.
“This is a more effective and responsible approach, particularly given there is no way to commodify wild animals for fashion which can be considered genuinely ethical.”
Recent polling conducted for the report found that 70% of consumers, when shown a genuine feather trimmed garment, believed the feathers to be faux or made from synthetic or plant-based sources.
The new feather ban comes as M/FW fields allegations of racism, with various models of colour boycotting the brand this year.