PETA Goes After Donna Karan!

[Image Source: NY Magazine]

Just when you thought the most awkward thing that could happen during Fashion Week was a celebrity getting photographed with her skirt tucked into her underwear in a Britney Spears-like moment, this Fashion Week is proving us all wrong. First came the Marc Jacobs scandal, in which his company is now being investigated for paying $30,000 in bribe money to use the historic Lexington Avenue Armory for his fashion show--which is probably an even greater transgression than making attendees of his show wait for hours as he delayed starting during the last Fashion Week (though this did score him the Grand Finale this time around.) But now Donna Karan has been struck by the most fearsome of activist groups: PETA.

Today's Page Six reports that "Donna Karan will be looking for a new assistant" after her last assistant allowed a PETA member disguised as a chic fashionista/assistant carrying soy lattes into Karan's Central Park West apartment. The activist waited for Karan to arrive before confronting her with a DVD of animals having their pelts harvested as the organization's way of protesting the designer's use of furs in her collections. Apparently quite a commotion followed this, with lots of yelling between the housekeeper, the activist and the doorman that let her in before she was ejected from the property.

 

But this will not stop PETA, whose members planned to protest DKNY's Thursday show on Greenwich Street by wearing Donna Karan masks while beating bloody stuffed rabbits. Now, I've never been a fan of the fur look myself--I think wearing animal pelts should have gone out with the Viking Age along with the horned helmets, and we should have left it at that--but I'm also pretty sure there are worse designers than Donna Karan when it comes to being fur-happy. And I've also always wondered this: Even if we eliminate fur from fashion, how are we ever going to edit out leather? That would take out pretty much my entire shoe collection. Now Donna Karan has learned the hard way the lesson of Michael Vick: You Do Not. Mess. With. PETA.

On the upside, for anyone looking to get into the fashion industry, there may be an assistant position opening in a city near you. Provided, of course, that you can distinguish friends from foes.

[From A Dog To A Dog, Drop It!]