Will exotic skins go the same way as fur? That depends. First, they have to become way less fashionable.
The Kering Group — parent to luxury brands including Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta, and Yves Saint Laurent — took a major step forward for animal welfare, when it announced it would be going completely fur-free in 2021. “The world has changed,” the corporation’s CEO François-Henri Pinault said. “Luxury naturally needs to adapt to that.” The ban was part of an exciting and hopeful shift in fashion, which saw several big names in the luxury world shift away from fur.
But if you scan the shelves of Saint Laurent today, the Kering Group’s animal welfare announcement starts to look a little hollow. Fur is out, sure. But python? That’s still very much in. This is even though multiple investigations have linked the snakeskin industry with cruel practices.
But Saint Laurent is far from alone. The digital shelves of many luxury brands are lined with exotic skins. Dakota Johnson was criticized for modeling handbags made from python and crocodile leather for Gucci, another Kering brand that banned fur back in 2017.
Leather production in Asia exposes workers to harsh chemicals.
Fur has been falling out of favor with consumers for decades. What was once the height of glamor in the 1950s and 1960s became a target of animal rights activists in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, it was all the way back in 1980 that PETA (now the largest animal rights organization in the world) was formed and started protesting fur.
In the late nineties and early aughts, a trickle of fur bans happened, but it wasn’t until decades later, in 2016, that the fur-free wave really started to take off — when Giorgio Armani dropped fur from its fall/winter collection.
Over the next few years, Gucci, Burberry, Chanel, Prada, Versace, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Dolce and Gabbana, and more followed suit. “Fur? I’m out of that,” Donatella Versace said in an interview for The Economist’s 1843 magazine in 2018. “I don’t want to kill animals to make fashion. It doesn’t feel right.”
And, perhaps, all of these luxury fashion brands did suddenly grow a conscience around killing furry animals, like foxes and minks, for coats and hats. But the truth is, it was likely less about animal rights and more about keeping up with the times.
Animal welfare or not, after decades of protests and a change in social attitudes, fur just wasn’t fashionable anymore. Gucci’s president Marco Bizzarri summed it up in 2017 when he said: “Do you think using furs today is still modern? I don’t think it’s still modern and that’s the reason why decided not to do that. It’s a little bit outdated.”
The scale of the problem
The numbers behind the exotic skins trade are staggering — and largely hidden from the consumers buying the finished products. Every year, millions of crocodiles, alligators, lizards, snakes, and other wild animals are killed to manufacture high-end products intended to serve as conspicuous indicators of exalted style and status, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. The global exotic leather market was valued at approximately $914 million in 2024 — dominated by crocodile leather, which alone accounts for roughly $498 million of that figure.
What makes the supply chain particularly troubling is not just its size, but its opacity. Illegal trade in exotic skins is rampant, with poor policing, weak penalties, and a lack of accountability throughout the supply chain. It is estimated that for every animal legally bred in captivity for the exotic-skins trade, another will be illegally taken from the wild. Of the top six countries exporting reptile skins — Colombia, Indonesia, the United States, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Argentina — five are also the top sources of illegal skins.
The production side is no less alarming. It can take the skins of four crocodiles to make a single bag, according to PETA. And the tanning process required to convert those skins into leather has its own footprint: crocodile skins are too tough for vegetable tanning, meaning chromium — which is carcinogenic and dangerous when it pollutes natural environments — is almost universally used instead.
There is also a public health dimension that rarely enters fashion conversations. Crocodile farms create a breeding ground for zoonotic pathogens — including salmonella, E. coli, and West Nile virus — in conditions not unlike the “wet markets” linked to the emergence of COVID-19. Conservation experts have warned that the next pandemic could, in part, trace its origins to the fashion industry.
Not all luxury brands continue to use exotic animal skins
Not all luxury fashion brands continue to use exotic animal skins like snake and crocodile. Burberry, Chanel, and Victoria Beckham are three examples of luxury names that have turned their backs on the industry. According to PETA, the former decided to ditch the material after it was shown “hard-hitting exposés” depicting the cruelty of exotic skins.
Copenhagen Fashion Week banned feathers, exotic skins, and fur in 2023 as it moved to become more sustainable. Fashion Council Germany — the organizer of Berlin Fashion Week — said it will also ban feathers, exotic skins, and fur beginning this year. Berlin’s decision came after high-profile PETA investigations exposed cruelty at exotic skins suppliers for Kering.
The animal rights organization maintains that many crocodiles and alligators are skinned alive in the exotic skins industry, while there have been reports of snakes with their mouths sealed shut before they are inflated and skinned. In rejection of animal cruelty, the state of California banned crocodile and alligator products, alongside fur products, in 2020. But there has yet to be the same level of bans in fashion that fur has seen. Perhaps this is because there is still status and style in exotic leather bags and shoes.
The industry’s counterargument
Defenders of exotic skins — particularly in Australia, which accounts for 60 percent of the global trade in saltwater crocodile skins — argue that regulated farming actually supports conservation. Crocodile farming was originally conceived not only as a way to reduce pressure on wild populations, but as a means through which commercial incentives for crocodilian conservation could be generated. The crocodile industry points out that Australia’s saltwater crocodile population rebounded after protection laws were enacted in the 1970s, and attributes some of that recovery to farming’s role in reducing poaching incentives.
Hermès, the most prominent luxury brand still deeply invested in exotic skins, maintains that it applies rigorous traceability standards — tracking every skin from farm to atelier and adhering to CITES regulations. The brand has framed its sourcing as a model of responsible luxury, one where craftsmanship and longevity justify the use of rare materials. (In 2020, a Hermès Birkin made with crocodile skin and diamonds broke the world record for the most expensive handbag when it sold for $300,000 at auction. In the same year, Hermès revealed plans to build Australia’s biggest crocodile farm, which would have space for around 50,000 reptiles.)
But critics argue that these claims amount to greenwashing in concrete pens. Crocodiles have a natural lifespan of 70 years and travel up to 10km at a time in the wild; on Australian farms owned by luxury brands, they are legally confined to as little as 0.25 square meters — roughly the length of their own body. They are slaughtered at 2-3 years old. The code of practice governing their welfare on Australian farms, written in 2009, went unreviewed for 15 years — and was only updated in 2023, despite a decade and a half of new science on reptile pain and cognition.
The next generation of consumers
The trajectory of exotic skins may ultimately be decided not by regulators or activists, but by the consumers of tomorrow — and there are real signals that younger shoppers are changing the equation.
A Deloitte global survey found that 25 percent of Gen Z respondents said they had stopped or reduced buying from a business because its values or conduct didn’t match their own — with environmental negligence being a common deal-breaker. Meanwhile, millennials currently account for 45 percent of luxury goods spending worldwide, with Gen Z accounting for another 20 percent — a combined purchasing force that luxury brands simply cannot ignore. In 2021, the fashion search platform Lyst reported a 178 percent increase in searches for “vegan leather”, a sign that curiosity is already translating into shopping behavior.
Demand for fur didn’t fall because of a law. It fell because it stopped feeling aspirational to the generation that replaced its core consumer base. Exotic skins are not there yet — but the demographic mathematics suggest the window may be narrowing.
Brands are working on animal-free alternatives for the luxury fashion world. Leukeather, for example, is marketed as an alternative to exotic leather. It’s made with dried Leucaena pods — the seed pods of river tamarind trees native to Central America — and has a naturally patterned texture, similar to alligators and crocodiles, without requiring embossing. Crucially, it is also plastic-free and biodegradable — a meaningful distinction from most faux leathers on the market.
Luxury brands including Hermès, Alexander McQueen, Ralph Lauren, and Stella McCartney are now partnering with innovative leather alternative companies as part of a broader shift. MycoWorks produces a mycelium-based leather alternative called Reishi, which has already been used in Hermès products. Natural Fiber Welding’s MIRUM material — made from agri-waste and natural rubber with no petrochemicals — has been incorporated into pieces by Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney.
The economics are still challenging. The cost of next-generation, plastic-free leather alternatives is currently comparable to bovine leather, making it prohibitively expensive for the mainstream market. Luxury brands, however, can lean into the exclusivity angle — positioning new materials as the frontier of innovation rather than a compromise. That framing may be exactly what’s needed to make the pivot feel aspirational rather than apologetic.
The industry is also still precarious: investment in next-generation materials halved between 2021 and 2022, and at least one promising startup shut down in 2023. But momentum is building. Newer entrants like Polybion’s Celium — a bacterial cellulose leather fed on mango waste — entered the market in 2024, and major retailers including ASOS, Nordstrom, and Selfridges have already joined Mulberry, Calvin Klein, HUGO BOSS, and Vivienne Westwood in banning exotic skins entirely.
And just like they didn’t give up on fur, animal rights organizations aren’t letting the exotic skins issue go either. But with the number of environmentally and ethically aware consumers on the rise — and with a generation of luxury shoppers who grew up googling supply chains — it likely won’t take decades to achieve action.
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