Kering CEO refuses to bring leather into fur fight
The chief executive of luxury group Kering, François-Henri Pinault, has defended the use of leather in general and of exotic leather in particular by its brands, which include Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni and Saint Laurent.
Kering announced on September 24 that it would end the use of fur in all of its collections. Mr Pinault said that, starting with Gucci in 2017, the group’s brands had, one after another, taken the decision to stop using fur. The recent announcement formalised this phasing out of fur.
In an interview on French television soon after, Mr Pinault confirmed that, in future, consumers would see no fur in any of the group’s shops. “There will be no more fur and no more raising of animals for fur,” he said. “And there will be no going back.”
This prompted questions about Kering’s continued use of leather, particularly of exotic leather. Kering acquired its own specialist producer of exotic leather, France Croco, in 2013 and built a new production facility for it in northern France in 2017.
Mr Pinault described the use of exotic skins as “a little different”, a reference to their raw material deriving from authorised and carefully managed biodiversity projects.
He added that, since 2018, Kering had in place a series of standards for the raising of livestock from which it sources an important proportion of its raw materials more widely. “They are the most demanding standards in the world,” he said.
