The documentary Slay will be screened in Milan at the Anteo cinema on 14 June 2023 as a special event within the ninth edition of the Milan Fashion Film Festival, in the presence of fashion school students and journalists. This will be followed by a panel discussion with Emma Hakansson, co-author of the film as well as an activist and founder of Collective Fashion Justice and a 2023 jury member of the Fashion Film Festival Milano.

• Even when the conversation turns to sustainable fashion, animal rights are rarely discussed. Beyond fur and exotic skins — by now condemned by most — there are many animal-derived materials we wear every day, above all leather and wool, but also silk, feathers and cashmere.
• The documentary Slay by French director Rebecca Cappelli — available to watch for free online — tackles this subject by seeking to debunk a number of myths and by discussing the alternatives now available.
• Slay exposes an opaque and poorly regulated supply chain that, from China to Tuscany and on to Australia, feeds a fashion system built on frantic consumption and overproduction.

What we wear is no longer simply an expression of our personality: it has become a mirror of the values we believe in. Exactly like what we eat. And yet, while it is true that the debate over the pointlessness of animal suffering in food has become mainstream — even at family lunches — the same cannot be said when it comes to the fashion industry. Social awareness has certainly shifted on the issue of fur — so much so that many brands have gone fur-free — and to some extent on the use of exotic skins, but not with regard to all other animal-derived materials, from leather to wool and silk. Indeed, it remains a topic that is often pushed into the background even when the discussion centres on ethical and sustainable fashion.

Why do we use animal-derived materials?

The documentary Slay by French director Rebecca Cappelli is, in this respect, a turning point. Well constructed and raw without being excessive (the director wanted it to reach as wide an audience as possible), it poses one very specific question: why do we use animal-derived materials in fashion when we have alternatives?

The answer is certainly complex, and Cappelli sought it through an extensive process that cost her three and a half years of research and a journey around the world, in which she put herself on the line personally. "I grew up in Paris, I love fashion. Slay is my personal journey as a fashion consumer. I loved wearing luxury leather accessories, cashmere and even fur. At the same time I considered myself an animal lover, one of those people who helped to save them. Putting myself in the film made me vulnerable and took me out of my comfort zone, but it was essential," the director recounts following the Italian premiere of the film, screened in Milan. The documentary, by the choice of the director and producers, is available to watch for free online on WaterBear, a free streaming platform for films with ethical and environmental content.

From China to Tuscany and on to India

Slay (from the English verb "to slay") focuses on three specific areas — fur, leather and wool — and seeks to dismantle the received wisdom surrounding these materials and to make clear the negative impact they have not only on the animals themselves, but also on environmental pollution, biodiversity loss and the workers involved in the supply chain.

"Slay has no starting script; everything is filmed on location for the first time, with no prior scouting. I chose not to include the most graphic scenes we came across, such as skinning or the killing of an animal, because, honestly, they are something you cannot watch," the director continues.

From China, where Cappelli investigates the world of fur and the appalling farms, to Santa Croce sull'Arno in Tuscany, where the focus shifts to leather tanneries, the common thread running through the scenes is a pervasive sense of illegality and a lack of oversight and transparency in the supply chain. In Haining, an hour from Shanghai, Cappelli finds it easy to purchase furs from protected species, while in Tuscany the conditions of the foreign tannery workers appear not all that different from those filmed in Kanpur, in India, the world's city for low-cost leather production, where the population suffers from various illnesses caused by the chemicals used to treat hides and subsequently discharged into rivers and soil.

Cappelli devotes the central section of Slay to the subject of leather, complementing it with data and research gathered together with Collective Fashion Justice, a non-profit organisation that promotes fashion that is ethical and fair for the planet, animals and people. The received idea she seeks to debunk is that the leather used in fashion is a by-product of the food industry and that, as such, if it were not exploited in this way it would simply be a waste product.

In reality, it is two sides of the same coin. Leather itself is in its own right a commodity for which animals are raised and killed, a product market estimated at 394 billion dollars (in 2020). Beyond animal suffering, the issue therefore concerns deforestation to make way for livestock farming, primarily in the Amazon, and the conditions of workers, both in abattoirs and in tanneries.

It is estimated that producing a pair of bovine leather boots generates 66 kilograms of CO2 and uses 12,370 litres of water. By way of comparison, it is shown that the alternatives to animal hides now available — both synthetic ones and so-called bio-based ones, that is, those derived from plants — have a lower impact in terms of emissions and water footprint. This is a point that Rebecca Cappelli wishes to address seriously, because it is often the starting point for debate about what is more sustainable. For this reason, the Slay website makes available a mini book with data and research for those wishing to explore the issue further.

We need to question what we wear

For a viewer who is neither vegan nor connected to the world of animal rights activism, the perhaps most surprising part of Slay is the section devoted to wool. A material so widespread within the context of fashion's overproduction that it necessarily relies on a system of intensive farming, far removed from the bucolic image of sheep roaming free and happy in the fields. "I know that audiences are often surprised by the wool section. There are certainly tiny farms with just a few animals that are treated well, but that is not the case for the vast majority of woollen garments we wear. Sheep and lambs are treated as a commodity: when they start to cost more than the value of what they produce, they are killed, even if they are young and healthy," Cappelli concludes.

The power of a film like Slay is that it sparks conversation around a subject that rarely gets the attention it deserves. Only a few years ago, giving up fur seemed unthinkable, yet today the prospect of an Europe free of fur farms is real and drawing ever closer — and it seems reasonable even to those who are not particularly concerned with animal rights (the Fur Free Europe campaign, also championed by Slay, has gathered over 1,700,000 signatures from European citizens).

As in the food supply chain, so too in fashion, the end consumer has by now lost all connection with the origin of what they buy — and then eat or wear — and the world of global markets has helped to loosen that perception of this link and of where things come from even further. The leather of our shoes and the wool of our jumpers were once part of a living creature. Slay is here to remind us of that.