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" Last week, Milan-based designer Giorgio Armani, he of the Brutalist suits and incredibly comfortable\u00A0fabrics, announced he would no longer be using fur in his designs. He&amp;#039;s joining a growing\u00A0number of designer labels\u00A0like Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss that are choosing to break with old-school concepts of luxury and give fur the boot. Today, Dazed interviewed the man who convinced Armani to go furless: P.J. Smith, the executive director of The Humane Society who never thought he&amp;#039;d be working in fashion.  In the interview, Smith says fashion is falling behind other industries in terms of animal welfare. While\u00A0Sea World is no longer breeding captive orcas (thanks, no doubt, to the outrage surrounding 2013\u00A0sleeper hit Blackfish) and CGI has so surpassed the performance abilities of real animals that Disney made an entire movie showing it off, the high-end apparel and accessories market\u00A0has clung stubbornly to fur as a signifier of upper-crust inclinations.  &amp;quot;Many brands still think that in order to be a luxury company, you have to do fur,&amp;quot; Smith said. &amp;quot;But what&amp;#039;s odd is that fur\u2013when you&amp;#039;re talking about tiny little strips of skin produced on Chinese fur farms\u2013is actually very cheap. It&amp;#039;s not luxurious at all.&amp;quot;  His biggest argument when persuading designers to lay off fur is to show them that there are much more high-quality alternatives. &amp;quot;When you compare [real fur] to top-quality faux fur, which in many situations is more expensive, the idea that real animal fur is luxurious doesn&amp;#039;t make sense,&amp;quot; he said. Smith thinks other fashion houses will follow suit now that the big names have started saying no to fur, but it will take a while.\u00A0 And a huge problem remains in the lack of regulation. Switzerland, for instance,\u00A0has strict rules that require listing the species of animal and how it was killed on a garment&amp;#039;s label;\u00A0they&amp;#039;ve proven quite\u00A0effective in deterring some\u00A0designers from using the stuff. The U.S., on the other hand,\u00A0has no such standards. Armani&amp;#039;s move is a heartening one for animal-lovers\u2014but we&amp;#039;ll have to keep waiting\u00A0to\u00A0see how far self-regulation takes us in the long run. Read the full interview here.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/style/a43476/the-man-who-de-furred-armani/>