Animal-rights group PETA is urging Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop to stop using wool gruesomely culled from fluffy angora rabbits at Chinese factories, which most big brands stopped using due to animal cruelty concerns.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is launching a social media campaign aimed at pressuring Goop by showing footage of the creatures screaming as their fur gets violently ripped out by hand or shaved, leaving them bloody and terrified.
“Goop says it doesn’t mind being the tip of the spear – that it goes first so others don’t have to. But in the case of angora, Goop is last. Now is the time to catch up,” PETA President Tracy Reiman wrote Paltrow in September.
The Post has sought comment from Goop. PETA said the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company has yet to respond to its pleas.
Paltrow herself modelled an angora sweater currently going for $238.50 on Goop’s website – down from an eye-popping $795 – in an Instagram video posted in March.
“You know I love to show you my closet. This is an angora oversized sweater,” she says as she pulls on the fluffy orange garment. “It’s nice enough to wear out to a kind of easy dinner – very chic color and it’s super comfortable.”
Goop also sells a “cloud crewneck” that’s “done in a soft, downy angora blend,” “makes a fun addition to any sweater stack” and is on sale for $357, down from $595.
But the fun, chic looks conceal a horrifying harvesting process, according to PETA.
The group said it went undercover at eight angora wool factory farms in China, gathering footage showing the rabbits suffering as they’re hung from the ceiling by their legs and profusely bleed from wounds caused by the shaving process.
PETA detailed the “unending hell” the rabbits undergo as “they’re kept in miserable, cramped enclosures until it’s time for their hair to be shorn or ripped out.
“Farmers carry them around by their sensitive ears before tying them up by their legs, which not only hurts but also terrifies them to the point of paralysis,” the group stated, emphasizing that the process happens every few months until the poor creatures die from “injury, illness or unending trauma.”
Most brands have stopped using angora fur since PETA first exposed the grim harvesting practice in 2013, according to reports.
H&M and Acne quickly stopped using angora wool, according to Fashionista.com, and were soon followed by Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci, Guess, Dolce & Gabbana and Zara, among hundreds of others.
Exports of angora rabbit wool from China fell from $23 million in 2010 to $4.3 million in 2015, Fashionista.com reported.
PETA is targeting Gooop since it’s one of the last companies to use angora wool.
Its campaign, called “From Goop to Gore: Gwyneth’s Angora Sweaters Scream,” shows a cartoon image of Paltrow holding a fistful of bloody fur in one hand and a miserable bunny by the scruff of the neck in the other.
It’s not the first brush with controversy for Goop, whose high-end products include cardigans for up to $995, plain cotton sleeveless dresses for $1,990, face cream for $105 and a $135 electric toothbrush.
The privately traded company, which was reportedly valued at around $250 million in 2018, was previously accused of having a “toxic” work culture. Amy Odell’s unauthorized biography of Paltrow, titled “Gwyneth,” claims that employees felt overworked and underpaid and described their boss as “erratic” and “childish” while calling out her alleged “impatience and perfectionism.”
The 53-year-old actress insisted to Vogue UK that aside from the few bad apples, Goop has “such a good culture.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
