According to The Hollywood Reporter, for the controversial limited edition headphones, Dre teamed up with iconic fashion designer Oscar De La Renta, who crafted a silver fox fur decorated ear muff-like design for the headphones. And though many fashionistos and fashionistas are now clamoring to get their hands on a pair of the $695 headphones, PETA representative Michelle Cho recently wrote an open letter to Dre urging him to “keep fur and exotic-animal skins out of your Beats by Dre designs.”
Read the full open letter below.
Dear Dre,
I hope this message finds you well. As you may know, PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 3 million members and supporters dedicated to the protection of animals. You have many fans here.
We’re writing today after reading about your new fox-fur headphones design with Oscar de la Renta. We wanted to get in touch to urge you to keep fur and exotic-animal skins out of your Beats by Dre designs. Foxes, minks, rabbits, and other animals—including cats and dogs—are bludgeoned, genitally electrocuted, strangled with wire nooses, drowned, and even skinned alive for their pelts. Most animals killed for their fur are slaughtered in China, where there are no penalties for those who abuse animals on fur farms. Please take a moment to view this short video on the fur trade, hosted by actor Eva Mendes: www.peta.org/FeatureEvaMendes.asp.
With so many fashionable, cruelty-free materials available these days, we hope that you will keep animals in mind and choose not to use fur or exotic skins in your collection. You’d be joining designers such as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Bouwer, and Vivienne Westwood, who have banned fur from their designs.
You have a tremendous amount of influence on young people — won’t you please consider using your platform to advocate kindness toward animals by pledging never to design with real fur and exotic skins?
Thank you so much for your time and attention. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
With kind regards,
Michelle Cho
PETA
For now, the luxury headphones are still on sale, but we’ll see if Dre responds to or even goes as far to remove the fur — though, if sales are as great as we assume they are, we highly doubt he’ll do that. But Dr. Dre isn’t the only celebrity who has ruffled PETA’s feathers in recent times. Check out these six other celebs who have drawn criticism from PETA. –nicholas robinson
