Fur is out in 2026. Campaigners prove how collective action can win.

Hi there. Sustainability in fashion doesn’t get big wins very often, but this week we’ve got something to celebrate. 

See, a series of high profile animal fur bans happened at the close of 2025, demonstrating the growing support for animal justice from all areas of the industry. It raises another crucial point: when done right, sustained activism actually works to shift things we once thought were immovable. 

As the campaigners win in this one area, it’s worth asking where that momentum could go next. After all, many animal justice activists have been narrowly focused on fur the past few decades, and that narrow focus paid off. That’s what Amy explores for this Veganuary issue. She reached the depths of Reddit, spoke to experts about where campaigners are setting their sights now, and unpicked how this can be a blueprint for wider change. 

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Amy and JD

“Rick Owens is just another corporate tool!” shouted an anti-fur protester in a video taken inside the cult brand’s New York City boutique during a five-day campaign last month. The protests were organised by the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT), which targeted stores and top-level employees. While the media has long covered direct-action protestors negatively, activists know they can be an effective measure when paired with concerted action across society and industry. Owens quickly issued a statement banning fur and removed existing mink and beaver products from sale immediately. 

It’s a sign that the tide is turning. In the space of just 90 days at the end of last year, animal fur was banished from the pages of every major fashion magazine and the runways of some of the world’s biggest brands, including Owens. It’s one bright spot showing how organised action at all levels does pay off. 

First, back in October, Condé Nast (publisher of Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, and more) slipped a note into its sustainability strategy about prohibiting new animal fur. Campaigners from the CAFT had been protesting outside the homes of Vogue employees for months, though a spokesperson for the publisher indicated this had been one of its undisclosed values for years, per WWD.

Then in early December, New York Fashion Week announced it would clear its runways of fur from September 2026 onwards after consulting with Humane World for Animals and Collective Fashion Justice. Hearst Magazines, which owns Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire and Town & Country, also announced a ban. 

On top of all this, Poland, the world’s second largest fur producer, signed into a law an immediate ban on new fur farms, giving existing ones eight years to close, as President Karol Nawrocki noted the legislation’s wide support from the Polish population.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Sustained campaigner pressure works. Consumer pressure works. Raising your voice works. These bans happened in the space of a few months, but it’s taken years of work behind the scenes by campaigners. 

Their work offers a template worth studying. It combined narrow, achievable demands (not “fix fashion,” but “ban fur”) with pressure from multiple directions simultaneously: direct action, consumer shifts, industry consultation, and legislative routes. Each win made the next easier to secure, creating reputational risk for holdouts. It's the inside-outside strategy at work, with some campaigners engaging on fashion councils, others protesting outside executives’ homes. Neither alone would have worked. Together, they shifted something that seemed immovable.

This week, I looked through the evidence showing how effective the long-fought campaign against fur has been, and what that means for other causes. Because even if fur isn’t a key issue for you, this is a strong case study for how targeted activism with narrow goals can pay off when it’s driven by collective action. Emma Håkansson, founding director of Collective Fashion Justice (CFJ), spoke to me, saying: “We’re all chipping away at the walls of this old and archaic system and when a pillar falls, many have contributed to it.”

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been any resistance to the recent bans. Fur-use is, like many long-established industry issues, a practice that some corners of fashion simply feel entitled to (or, perhaps, are resigned to), and they’re strong-willed about it. A case in point: the Rick Owens subreddit got heated about all this. Owens is famed for his use of animal materials, worked for fur brand Revillon in the 2000s before setting up an in-house fur atelier, and has a fandom that reaches cult-like levels. And those fans kicked off.