animal rights

The wool protest at New York Fashion Week raises an uncomfortable question: can a material be sustainable if animal welfare is not part of the equation?

Rethinking wool starts with admitting that “sustainable” doesn’t tell the whole story.

Wool is natural, renewable and often presented as a responsible alternative to synthetics. But what happens when we look beyond the fibre to the animal it comes from?

The closer we look at fashion’s sustainability claims, the more complicated they become. A material can have environmental advantages and still raise serious ethical questions. “Better for the planet” and “ethical for animals” aren’t necessarily the same thing.

That tension came into sharp focus during New York Fashion Week this month, when PETA protesters disrupted the COS show on 13 September to protest the use of wool and alleged mistreatment of sheep. The confrontation escalated when Steven Kolb, then president and CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, physically restrained protesters. He subsequently resigned.

But beyond the disruption, the protest raised a question that deserves more attention than a few minutes of fashion-week drama:

Can we call a material sustainable if the way it is produced raises questions about animal welfare?

What do we actually mean by sustainable wool?

Wool is a natural, renewable protein fibre — sheep grow a new fleece each year — and it biodegrades under the right conditions, rather than persisting as plastic microfibres. Its durability, temperature regulation and odour resistance can also mean less frequent washing and longer use. Wool garments can be repaired, resold or recycled, although what happens at the end of a garment’s life depends on the garment and the system available to recover it.

Yet none of these characteristics tells us how the sheep were treated.

COS (owned by H&M Group) says its virgin wool is sourced from farms certified under the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), developed to address animal welfare, land management, and social requirements. Textile Exchange, which owns and manages the standard, describes animal welfare as a fundamental requirement. 

But what does a certification actually tell us — and what does it leave out?

We explored this topic in our eBook, This is Greenwashing. As with certified paper, RWS certification is designed to verify specific practices against a defined set of criteria. But certification has limits. Animal welfare standards are not the same thing as animal rights. People can reasonably believe that properly regulated sheep farming meets a meaningful animal-welfare standard while still disagreeing about what that standard should include.

Fashion loves categories. Natural. Synthetic. Sustainable. Circular. Responsible.

Labels make complicated systems easier to understand — and easier to sell. But sustainability isn’t a material category. It is a question of how something is produced, by whom, under what conditions, with what consequences, and for how long it remains in use.

Wool doesn’t become sustainable simply because it is natural. Nor can the sustainability of a synthetic fibre be judged solely by the fact that its raw material is fossil-derived. That does not diminish the well-established role of fossil fuels in driving climate change. But the sustainability of a finished product depends on its full lifecycle, not just whether its raw material is natural or fossil-derived.

The reality is messier.

So should we stop buying wool?

There isn’t a single answer.

Someone concerned primarily with fossil-fuel dependence may see wool differently from someone whose first concern is animal welfare. Someone buying a wool coat they expect to wear for twenty years is making a different choice from someone replacing polyester jumpers every winter.

But these aren’t separate conversations. If we’re serious about responsible fashion, we have to consider all of them: how a garment affects people, the planet and animals, and how long it remains in use. Prioritising one doesn’t automatically cancel out the others.

The material is only one part of the equation.

Perhaps the more useful question isn’t “Is wool sustainable?”
Rather, it is: “What exactly do we mean when we call this wool sustainable?”

Rethinking wool doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting it. It means resisting the temptation to stop at the label. Natural doesn’t mean harmless. Renewable doesn’t mean ethical. Certified doesn’t mean beyond question. And “sustainable” — perhaps the most overused word in fashion — doesn’t tell us nearly enough on its own.

The more responsible approach may simply be to ask better questions.