‘Bloody’ Chloe Ross Joins PETA to Target Exotic Skins at London Fashion Week

BGUK_2220278 - Bodypainted as a snake on a “bloody” surface, The Only Way Is Essex star Chloe Ross will help PETA cause a stir on Friday, the first day of London Fashion Week. Ross will hold a handbag-shaped sign with the message “Bin Snakeskin: Let Snakes Live.” The action aims to urge designers and fashionistas to ditch cruelly produced items made from the skins of exotic animals. “Every year, millions of beautiful snakes, lizards, alligators, and crocodiles are needlessly killed in horrific ways for fashion accessories. This makes my blood run cold!” says Ross. “No handbag, belt, or wallet is worth so much pain and suffering – so let’s leave wildlife in the wild and end the exotic-skins trade.” A recent PETA Asia exposé into a farm in Vietnam that supplies snakes’ skins for use in the global fashion industry revealed horrific cruelty to animals, including sealing snakes’ mouths and anuses with rubber bands and inflating them to death with an air compressor, crushing their heart and causing severe pain. New footage from Kindness Project also shows crocodiles on farms with ties to Hermès confined to concrete pens, electrocuted, stabbed, shot, and mutilated with screwdrivers. The exotic-skins industry also poses a significant public-health risk: experts warn that these unsanitary and crowded conditions are the perfect breeding ground for viruses such as the one that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Top designers and retailers who have banned the sale of exotic skins include Calvin Klein, Chanel, Victoria Beckham, Paul Smith, Selfridges, and Mulberry.