With Leather Falling out of Favor, Models will be Wearing even Less Next Year.

                                                       Cows on the Gangway

                                                        
It is Fashion Week in New York City’s Bryant Park and the chatter beneath
the tents is not about the soaring price of cocaine or the recent invasion
of Bulgarian models who are stealing all the leftover dotcom millionaires.

The chatter is not about the recent Kenneth Cole campaign that mocks
PETA’s(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign that suggests
women withhold sexual favors from men until they refrain from eating meat,
wash, and stop watching smash-mouth football.

Oddly enough, the chatter is not even about the models who are using
adopted babies are new fashion accessories to convince a gullible public
that these spindly, breastless women are really earth mothers.

No, the chatter is about leather.

It seems the mad cow scare in Europe has significantly affected meat
consumption, which is down 70% from last year in Germany and France.
Accordingly, cattle farmers are sending fewer cattle to market--diseased
herds go to Ethiopia to reduce famine--and there are fewer leather hides
coming onto the market. Accordingly, prices for shoes, handbags, belts, and
clothing have jumped in Europe as much as 10% in the last few weeks.
Moreover, even steeper increases are expected in the automotive and 
furniture industries that use a lot of leather. And with people in Europe
and America getting larger by the year, the fear is there won’t be enough
leather to cover  these increasingly large behinds.

Most models don’t wear fur because PETA is likely to throw buckets of
slaughterhouse blood on their new outfits. So leather has been the material
of choice because it is readily available and know one really cares what
happens to slaughtered cattle. Unfortunately for the fashion industry, this
is no longer true. For this reason a seminar during Fashion Week, “Foul
Leather Weather,” addressed the ramifications of the mad cow scare on the
fashion industry. 

The immediate concern is there won’t be enough hides to make the upmarket
leather jackets models wear to trendy clubs where they can behave badly
enough to get coverage in next morning’s New York Post. An even bigger,
more legitimate concern is the impact on the price and availability of
shoes. Models don’t mind paying $500 for a pair of shoes but they insist on
having hundreds of pairs to choose from.  The mad cow scare has already
reduced the choice of available shoes, especially from Italy, and New York
models are up in arms.

And there’s the health scare. Models lucky enough to get the $2000 Kenneth
Cole jacket are openly concerned about whether they can get mad cow disease
through the leather. The logic is compelling. After all, the leather has
contained the meat for the 30 months of a cow’s life. The models fear they
could become contaminated over time by  wearing the jacket too often and
eating too much dairy food.

Models have other concerns.  The Food and Drug Administration has expressed
concern that byproducts of the cattle slaughtering process--such as blood,
fetal calf serum and meat broth--could find their way into vaccines and
dietary supplements. Since many models exist on dietary supplements and
expensive vodka, the FDA’s concern is taken very seriously. That is why
during fashion weeks there was so much talk about giving up supplements
completely.

Other concerns are emerging. Models make most of their money, outside of
the states, in Italy, France, and Germany, where mad cow scares are most
publicized. Models are demanding assurances that the apparel they wear
during the upcoming international fashion shows will be free of any trace
of mad cow disease. Meat eaters should wear bells.

The models have become militant, insisting on the right to be accompanied
by their mad cow sniffing dogs.

And their new babies around their necks.