Animal rights campaign group PETA UK has come under fire for posting an “incredibly disrespectful” tweet about Karl Lagerfeld’s death just hours after it was announced.
Lagerfeld, the creative director of the Chanel and Fendi fashion houses, died at the age of 85 in Paris, French news outlets confirmed on Tuesday.
A couple of hours after the announcement, PETA posted a message on its official UK Twitter account, saying: “Karl Lagerfeld has gone, and his passing marks the end of an era when fur and exotic skins were seen as covetable.
“PETA sends condolences to our old nemesis’s loved ones.”
A spokesperson for PETA confirmed that the comment was from the group’s founder, animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk.
The same comment was sent out to journalists and beauty columnist Sali Hughes took to Twitter to say she thought the message was “gobsmacking”.
PETA has criticised Lagerfeld in the past for using fur in his fashion lines at Fendi and Chanel, pushing the designer to defend his position in interviews.
“It’s very easy to say no fur, no fur, no fur, but it’s an industry,” he told the New York Times in 2015.
But in December 2018 Lagerfeld agreed to pull all fur and exotic skins – including crocodile, lizard, snake and stingray – from Chanel.
A spokesperson at the time said the brand wanted to maintain ethical standards, following extensive pressure from campaigning groups. “We did it because it’s in the air, but it’s not an air people imposed to us,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel fashion and president of Chanel SAS.
Commenters responded to Hughes’ tweet, saying they thought PETA was disrespectful in the timing of its “condolences” and that such statements actively put people off wanting to be vegetarian or support animal rights.
PETA told HuffPost UK: “Ms Newkirk [Ingrid Newkirk is PETA’s President] is nearly 70, almost of the same generation as Mr Lagerfeld, and although she didn’t design them, she wore fur garments for years.
“Therefore, there is nothing snarky in her remark that fur’s time has passed. She writes: ‘Grief, with which we are all familiar, is real, so PETA’s condolences to anyone who has loved and lost someone are genuine, regardless of the deceased’s position on fur’.”