When Peta protestors stormed the Cos runway at New York Fashion Week on Sunday, much of the online discourse focused on the physical altercation with Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) president and CEO Steven Kolb that followed. In the aftermath, the protest itself has received significantly less attention.
Still, the suggestion that fashion removes sheep wool from its supply chain drew a breath of exasperation from some fashion insiders, and confusion from others. Wool makes up a tiny percentage of fashion’s fiber basket, and in sustainability circles, it is often touted as a perfect playground for better farming practices, and a natural alternative to synthetic performance fabrics.
The question Peta raised has proved to be a controversial one: should fashion ban wool?
It’s a complicated question. Animal rights activists argue that even the strictest certifications can’t stamp out rough handling and inhumane conditions entirely.
But, unlike virgin animal fur and leather, the conversation around banning wool is nearly non-existent. In fact, knitwear is booming.
And the International Woolmark Prize — which encourages emerging designers to explore the creative potential of Australian wool — is one of fashion’s leading talent incubators, counting Jean Paul Gaultier creative director Duran Lantink as its most recent winner and Karl Lagerfeld, Valentino Garavani and Yves Saint Laurent among its earliest (Woolmark does not comment on Peta activations).
“Wool is the animal-derived material that benefits from some of the most effective ethics-washing,” says Emma Håkansson, founder of the non-profit Collective Fashion Justice and author of Total Ethics Fashion, which advocates for putting people, animals and the planet before profit. Animal rights activists like Håkansson have campaigned against wool for decades, hoping to expose the alleged mistreatment of sheep in wool supply chains, which can include premature slaughter, castration and tail docking without pain relief, and rough shearing, among other types of mistreatment.
Collective Fashion Justice’s efforts have led to major strides, including the move away from mulesing, a painful procedure in which farmers cut away strips of skin from the hindquarters of lambs to prevent fly infections. But they often face the same rebuttals, says Håkansson: you do not have to kill sheep to obtain wool, and mistreatment is limited to a few bad apples.
Fashion brands tend to deny the systemic mistreatment, pointing to certification schemes like Nativa and the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), both of which have been implicated in Peta investigations over the years. When asked about Sunday’s protest, a spokesperson for Cos owner H&M Group told Vogue Business: “We take any allegations of animal welfare breaches very seriously.
We are committed to only sourcing animal fibers from certified farms and recycled sources. When it comes to wool, all virgin wool used in our products comes from farms certified to the RWS, a third-party certification system owned and governed by Textile Exchange.
Following the investigations carried out by the certification body into Peta’s allegations related to mohair and wool farms, licenses for one mohair and one wool farm have been suspended, and these farms are no longer permitted to sell certified materials.” (Textile Exchange, for its own part, says the humane handling of animals is a “fundamental requirement” of the RWS certification, and any mistreatment of animals is “unacceptable”.)
According to the latest Materials Market Report by Textile Exchange, sheep wool is the most widely used animal-based fiber in fashion, totaling 1.1 million tonnes globally in 2024 (around 0.9% of total fiber production). Meanwhile, other animal fibers beyond wool — primarily silk, but also including alpaca, cashmere and mohair — made up an additional 0.1% of total fiber production.
But wool is a relatively small percentage of fashion’s total fiber basket. For comparison, cotton topped 24.1 million tonnes (19%) in the same period, while polyester led at around 77.7 million tonnes (59%).
That’s part of the reason fashion netizens were so confused when Peta suggested an all-out ban at the Cos show on Sunday. Others felt that fashion had already sufficiently given in to Peta’s demands: while the fur aesthetic continues to enrapture fashion fans, virgin animal fur has been all but wiped off the face of fashion, banned by brands, retailers and fashion councils alike.
This season at NYFW was the first since its fur ban — spearheaded by the CFDA — went into effect.
Progress has been slower with leather, which Peta co-founder and principal Ingrid Newkirk calls “hairless fur”. Earlier this year, Kering CEO Luca de Meo instigated a new strategic objective for the French luxury group to reduce its use of virgin animal leather by 30% before 2028, kickstarting new investments in innovative alternatives.
And Copenhagen cult brand Ganni phased out all virgin leather in 2024, offering products made from Oleatex (which reformulates olive oil production waste to mimic animal leather) and Pelinova (which recycles leather scraps) instead.
But while some say Peta will always move the goalposts and will never be content with fashion’s efforts on animal welfare, Peta says its end goal has been clear from the start. “Fashion needs to move away from all things animal.
We don’t need to deck ourselves out in anything we have stolen off an animal’s back or killed an animal for,” says Newkirk. “There are no ifs, ands, or buts.” Fashion largely pushes back on such black-and-white policies, preferring to pursue incremental reforms rather than limiting creativity.
So where do we go from here? From tightening up the supply chain to investing in scaling alternatives, there are plenty of paths forward. But will fashion and Peta ever see eye to eye?
Wool isn’t just a fiber; it’s an ecosystem
Peta advocates for fashion to phase out animal-derived products in totality, arguing that no amount of audits or certifications can override the convoluted supply chain and the system of incentives that push suppliers at every step to cut corners in a bid to cut costs. But industry insiders say this is unrealistic, and risks swapping an animal welfare crisis for an environmental one (driving up polyester production) or a social one (removing an income stream for already struggling farmers).
“We have domesticated sheep over hundreds of years so they don’t have the ability to shed their own fleece anymore,” says knitwear designer and wool specialist Nicci James, whose documentary The Value of British Wool explores the properties of different British sheep breeds and the ecosystems around them. “If we don’t shear them, the wool gets very heavy, and the sheep can get stuck.
If they fall over, they can’t get themselves back up. They can also get blow flies living in their fleece, which can be fatal.
So you have to shear them for their welfare, and if you’re shearing them anyway, why not use the fiber? The alternative is burning or burying it, which is such a waste, especially at a time when farmers need to diversify their income streams to survive.”
While the industry may balk at the suggestion of banning wool, fashion is willing to admit its supply chain needs reform, not just in terms of animal welfare — a major pillar of mainstream certifications — but also land management, processing infrastructure and financial incentives for farmers. Take the recent push to reconnect British fashion to its farms, or the regenerative agriculture movement, which has emerged as best practice for rearing sheep, promising to restore soil health, support biodiversity and sequester carbon (admittedly, measuring progress against these metrics remains difficult).
Kering and Spanish fast fashion giant Inditex are among regenerative agriculture’s most prolific advocates, both having invested millions of dollars in the Regenerative Fund for Nature, but plenty of smaller brands have also become vocal supporters, including New York labels Theory and Eileen Fisher. (Newkirk says regenerative agriculture is “wishful thinking”.)
It’s a debate that demands nuance. “Wool is a renewable natural fiber that has been part of farming systems and textile production for generations,” explains Sarah Needham, chief engagement and partnerships officer at Textile Exchange.
“When produced responsibly, we believe wool can play an important role in a more resilient textile and apparel industry, supporting farming communities while creating opportunities for beneficial outcomes for animals, landscapes and nature. [But] we recognize that no fiber or material is without impacts or trade-offs. Rather than comparing fiber categories or positioning one material as universally better than another, we advocate for a portfolio approach: understanding where materials come from, how they are produced, and investing in the production systems that deliver better outcomes.”
What would a wool ban look like in practice?
Even if fashion were to issue an all-out ban on animal-derived fibers tomorrow, it would take years before plant- or bio-based alternatives reach the commercial scale needed to replace them, admits Håkansson. “It’s not feasible to phase out wool overnight. We need greater investment in next-gen materials with similar qualities.”
Collective Fashion Justice is working on a wool-free design guide, similar to its feather-free fashion manual, which will explore opportunities to support and scale alternative materials. But while there are upwards of 80 leather alternatives for fashion to play with, wool has been largely overlooked, says Håkansson.
Very few innovators have broken through, the most prominent being Japanese startup Spiber, which has already created test garments for Iris van Herpen and Burberry, using a man-made bio-based protein as an alternative to wool.
The challenge is that wool is one of fashion’s most versatile fibers, and no single alternative can do everything wool can. “Wool is durable, it has great recovery, natural elasticity and antimicrobial properties,” says James.
“Within the UK alone, there are more than 70 breeds of sheep which thrive in different landscapes. A sheep that is native to the Scottish borders or the stormy islands is going to produce a very different fiber to a sheep that grazes on coastal hills in Cornwall.
If you wanted to produce a technical yarn that could do the same thing, you would be adding a [harsh] chemical treatment [which sustainability advocates are trying to reduce] or a mechanical crimp. You would have to do so many more steps to engineer the same results.”
To replace wool, fashion would need to explore different alternatives, depending on the application, says Håkansson. “Tencel Lyocell might not be good for a felted wooly-looking coat, but it makes a fantastic base layer that is moisture-wicking and thermo-regulating.
If you want a rough tweed that softens over time, hemp could be a good alternative,” she explains. “I don’t wear it myself, but we could massively reduce the amount of virgin wool very quickly by using more recycled wool.”
When it comes to getting fashion to change its ways, Peta adopts a three-pronged approach: targeted undercover investigations revealing malpractice hidden in the supply chain; a robust corporate accountability function that combines behind-the-scenes consultancy with shareholder activism; and public pressure through campaigns and non-violent protest. “We always want to meet first, we always want to negotiate, we always want to do the homework for companies to help them find alternatives,” says Newkirk.
As for who ought to fund this research and development, and take on the risk of helping startups scale — a common problem that has thwarted even the most advanced innovations — she says that’s not Peta’s problem. “That’s for fashion to figure out.”
Whether or not fashion starts to phase out wool and other animal-derived products, asking whether it could or should happen would be a useful exercise, says Håkansson. “I think that it is massively lacking creativity and integrity for the fashion industry to not be willing to consider a future version of itself that is radically different from what it is now.”