Section: A Roll Number: 2011048 Name: Barnali Priyadarshini

Exercise 1: Letter from PETA to DKNY

November 20, 2010

Donna Karan,
Chief Designer
Donna Karan New York,
New York City, New York

Sub: Appeal for change in stance regarding animal cruelty

Dear Ms. Donna,

This is in regard to the animal cruelty and abuse that DKNY deals with for the production of their
fashion clothing and accessories. It has been on multiple fronts that PETA approached DKNY to bring
this to your awareness through both direct and indirect means, and even though we received a
positive response from your side, DKNY failed to keep its promise. It pains me to state that not only
did you turn a blind eye towards the initiatives taken by PETA to stop the usage of fur in the fashion
industry, but also you condone this appalling issue of animal cruelty.

We understand that in this emerging era of evolving fashion and technology, having a fashion
statement has become the new trend, and DKNY has successfully managed to ace up its game in the
fashion industry. However, it makes one question, if making a fashion statement by sacrificing the
innocent who are at our mercy really fashion? DKNY imports rabbit fur from fur farms in China, where
rabbits are bred on an enormous scale for the sole purpose of fur production. They live a precarious
short life of pain, terror, and desperation. The methods of poisoning, neck-breaking, suffocation, and
electrocution in which they are killed are absolutely cruel and inhumane. In the process of
electrocution, a rabbit is subjected to 240 volts of electricity through its body via a rod inserted
through its rectum. This is way more atrocious than it sounds, and it is beyond my comprehension of
how DKNY overlooks such issues.

We have been consistently protesting the use of rabbit fur by your company for fashion garments
since we approached you in 2005. We, the members of PETA staged our dissent, but it was ignored by
DKNY, which led us to launch a campaign against your firm in 2008. We staged protests outside the
Sheraton Boston Hotel, where you addressed the Yoga Journal Boston Conference. We also tried to
grab your attention during the Donna Karan fashion show in New York City. Furthermore, we launched
a website that provided details of how your firm designed and sold clothing made from rabbit fur. We
went beyond all measures and allied with fashion icon Tim Gunn, the chief creative officer for Liz
Claiborne and former chair of fashion design at Parsons New School for Design, to create a video that
narrated the sufferings of the animals being beaten, drowned, electrocuted, and skinned alive for their
fur. This video campaigning brought about a revolution in the fashion industry when big firms like
Nike, Gucci, GAP, and Kenneth Cole changed their material sources. But even that didn’t change your
perception towards animal abuse.

The era is shifting towards consumers making educated choices. People no more wear clothes and
accessories to look good, they are getting to know the details of the processes that go in the
manufacturing of fur. Educated individuals now understand and accept that animal cruelty for the
sake of fashion and laboratory experimentations is a crime and in no way can be justified. And if DKNY
fails to cope with these new changes, it’ll be in no time that the firm will be out of the top market
position that it holds. DKNY being a top leader in the fashion industry should set an example for
generations to come by condemning animal cruelty and torture. It should aid in impeding the process
of animal abuse and go about campaigning against it.

We, at PETA, sincerely look forward to DKNY’s approach to this situation and urge you to change your
practices of use of fur for your statement fashion. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks and Regards,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President,
People for Ethical Treatment of Animals

(Word Count of the body of the letter: 608 words)

Exercise 2: Letter from DKNY to PETA

November 30, 2010

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President,
People for Ethical Treatment of Animals,
New York City, New York

Sub: Response to concerns raised by PETA regarding animal cruelty

Dear Mr Ingrid,

This is in reference to your letter dated November 20, 2010 wherein you mentioned about the animal
cruelty followed at Donna Karan New York. I feel extremely disheartened to hear about the various
ways in which the innocent is subjected to cruelty and torture. I also appreciate the efforts of PETA,
who at various occasions, have tried to grab our attention and bring this to our notice. Moreover,
PETA successfully has managed to bring about changes in the production processes of some big firms
too and this applause-worthy. However, there are some points of view that I would like you to consider
too.

Fashion is all about what the clothes and accessories that you wear make you feel. Animal skins and
furs have been used in clothing and accessories since time immemorial, in essence, that they
symbolize wealth and power. Moreover, fashion is all about how presentable you are to society. While
I agree that animal cruelty cannot be justified under any situation, we at DKNY are trying our best to
return to the healthy production of fur for our products. We believe that it is no harm to culture fur
from endangered animals such as rabbits and are available in large quantities. The fur industry in China
has a bounty of rabbits, and it also provides lower material cost to designers. Over everything else, we
cannot deny that rabbit fur is a very environment-friendly substitute for materials like rayon that is
used to manufacture fur artificially. They not only pollute the atmosphere but also take an enormous
amount of time to biodegrade, making its disposal havoc.

I understand your concern about consumers getting educated by the day and making more informed
choices, but a recent poll conducted revealed that 64 percent of the Americans viewed buying and
wearing clothing made from fur as morally acceptable. Many fashion industries are also moving
towards manufacturing decorative trims and linings made from animal skin and fur for their products.
The fur industry contributed to a large part of the economy in the country, more than $880 million
dollars in Canada by directly creating employment opportunities for more than 70,000 natives of the
state. Of the fur produced in Canada, two-thirds came from fur farms, and as the Fur Council of Canada
stated, the value of fur production was way higher than forestry value for a particular area of land
over a 100-year period. The fact that global retail sales for fur products reached $13.334 billion dollars
in 2009 and was expected to increase for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, we would like to point out the recent incident where members of PETA used their Facebook
page to broadcast a bold vertical message. The combined message was available to be viewed by over
200,000 of our fans as well as millions of online Cyber Monday shoppers. Having said that, we would
also like to urge PETA to tone down their ways of creating awareness that hampers the image of our
company in any way and is also not acceptable. Everything said, I absolutely value your concerns and
the reasoning behind them as well. We at DKNY will work towards this issue and will try our level best
to figure out ways to get over with the issues that you have pointed. Neither do we in any way want
to profess animal cruelty and abuse, nor do we want to create a wrong image of ourselves in the minds
of our consumers.

Looking forward to a healthy business environment.

Thanks and Regards,

Donna Karan,
Chief Designer
Donna Karan New York,
New York City, New York

(Word Count of the body of the letter: 584 words)