There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha over the past few days in NYC over a video Stella McCartney made for People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals. In it, she tries to convince fashionistas, in town for the ready-to-wear shows (which start on Thursday) that buying leather is bad: for them, the environment and the cows.
Interestingly, the kerfuffle has to do with consumer access, rather than with the politics of the spot, or the graphic nature of the video and how leather manufacturers may, or may not, kill the cows.
Peta, and Ms McCartney, wanted the short film to be shown on “Taxi TV,” the ad/news titbit screen that runs an endless loop of video in the backseat of every yellow cab. The Taxi TV folks, however, did not want this; according to the Peta’s Dan Matthews, VeriFone Media, which owns Taxi TV, told it that it sees the gizmo as a promotional tool, not an outlet for personal politics or proselytizing. Taxi TV could not be reached to comment.
Mr Matthews said: “They said the service is intended for consumer promotions, not cautions, and refused an edit which would have focused more on Stella’s appeal for shoppers to consider animal-friendly fashions.”
As far as I can see, VeriFone Media’s argument goes like this: if you’re a leather person, and you see this spot, you might just switch the TV off, which would lose a viewer for other brands that had paid for spots and encourage them not to re-subscribe next season.
There is a counter-argument, though, that I think it has missed. It is not about the pros and cons of leather, but rather about consumer behaviour. Ms McCartney has built a strong and growing business without leather, so clearly there is a market for both her brand and her message. Indeed, it’s possible to imagine a taxi-rider who might be drawn in a good way to a spot with real content in a cab, and instead of switching off the programming, thus gaining the other spots a viewer.
As my colleague Luke Johnson pointed out in his column today, no risk, smaller reward. According to Mr Matthews, “We had budgeted $20,000 for the taxi spot, which we’re now investing into other online promotions.” The Taxi TV guys are playing it safe, and they may end up being, literally, the poorer for it.
Either way, for Ms McCartney this is a smart move. It means this ready-to-wear season she will have a presence in three of the four fashion week cities: NY, thanks to the video and all the related chat; London, where she is having a special one-off show of evening dresses; and Paris, where she has her regular show. That’s a demonstration of strength if I ever saw one.
And finally, on a more personal note, I’d also like to point out (and applaud) what seems like a maturing in Peta tactics vis à vis the fashion world. Much more subtle and subversive to whisper their position in the ears of individual taxi riders, or online users, than to do what animal activists have tended to do in the past: position themselves outside fashion shows dressed as bloody bunnies and shout aggressively at anyone who entered in fur, or throw a pie at Anna Wintour. The latter actions having resulted in Ms Wintour now attending shows accompanied by two giant bodyguards who muscle everyone out of the way at the end of each collection so Anna can exit first, thus antagonising a majority of the fashion world, who blame not her or Condé Nast, but Peta for their own inconvenience.
Vanessa has been the FT’s fashion editor since 2003, and is based in New York, though she lived in London for 12 years.