14 DAY TRIAL // When Lady Gaga walked the red carpet at an industry event clad in a dress made of meat (matched with shoes and purse of the same material), the world was shocked. Designer Rachel Freire is getting a similar reaction with her latest collection, made entirely of cow and yak nipples.
Granted, unlike the dress Gaga wore, you could hardly tell what Freire’s unique designs are made of, as the Huffington Post also notes.
Part of the Nippleocalypse Spring / Summer 2011 collection, the items include a bra, a breast plate and skirts, all made of rose-shaped cow nipples.
Freire premiered her latest creations at London Fashion Week and has taken them afterwards to Paris – all the while with animal rights groups saying such cruelty should not be condoned, let alone passed for high fashion.
"Isn’t the way we treat farmed animals bad enough without turning their dead bodies into a runway freakshow?” Justin Kerswell of UK-based animal charity Viva says.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is just out outraged that Freire would take nipples from a tannery and use them as “fabric” for her clothes.
“Buying leather directly contributes to factory farms and slaughterhouses because skin is the most economically important byproduct of the meat industry,” the group says in a statement.
“Leather is also no friend of the environment, as it shares responsibility for all the environmental destruction caused by the meat industry as well as the pollution caused by the toxins used in tanning,” PETA adds.
This comes on the heels of a statement from the designer herself, who said she wasn’t doing anything wrong since the nipples would have otherwise thrown in the garbage.
In other words, she said, she was making art from recycled material and no one wearing products made of leather should find reason to complain.
“If people don’t have a problem with leather, they shouldn’t have a problem with these designs,” she says, as cited by the same Huffington Post.
None of the designs Freire created will be made available for sale.