Fashion & Beauty

Clash Between CFDA and Peta Protestors Disrupts NYFW

By Alejandra García • September 14, 2026

At Sunday’s Cos show, protestors from animal rights organization Peta stormed the runway protesting the use of sheep’s wool for clothing. Peta has called on H&M Group, which owns Cos, to stop selling wool, on the grounds that sheep are abused in the shearing process.

Peta has protested fashion shows before. But things escalated when CEO and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Steven Kolb responded physically toward two of the protestors, restraining them, in a video that swiftly circulated online.

Kolb posted a statement regarding the incident to his Instagram Stories on the afternoon of the show. “I reacted inappropriately to an incident at a show earlier today. It wasn’t my place to do so. I should have let the security team handle the situation,” it read. He has since gone private.

“Mr. Kolb acknowledged fully that he responded inappropriately in the moment, and that the matter should have been handled by security. The CFDA agrees that these disruptions should be handled by the security professionals in place,” the CFDA said in a statement on Monday.

Many in the fashion community expressed discomfort at the way Kolb handled the situation. Consultant Simon Whitehouse, who was CEO of JW Anderson from 2014 to 2018, posted on Instagram that he feels “deeply uncomfortable, triggered” by the videos, and used the incident as a springboard to call for intervention and mediation in the fashion industry, relating especially to the climate crisis. Other fashion players including editors Blake Abbie and Susie Lau expressed support on anonymous fashion account Boring Not Com’s post critiquing Kolb’s response, which also argued that both parties were in the wrong.

One editor, while not condoning the response, flagged in the comments of a video covering the incident that attendees didn’t initially know the loud shouts were Peta protestors, and noted that the provocation was “unnecessarily startling” especially in a Financial District building on the weekend of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

In a comment on that same video, Peta responded: “They attacked the messenger, but they can’t silence the truth. When people try to use violence to silence those exposing how sheep are beaten, bloodied, and killed for scarves and sweaters, it only underscores the cruelty behind the industry. We will never back down until wool is off the runway.”

Peta protestors have long targeted fashion’s use of fur and leather. Coach has ramped up show security, requiring QR codes and checking attendees’ IDs in the past, after multiple runway shows were interrupted by leather protestors. The organization’s fur protests have also been effective, with this season marking the first that NYFW has officially banned the use of fur in collections. That wool — a natural material — is now being targeted, surprised many spectators.

The Cos protest is the first time fashion week protestors have targeted wool, and comes following an April 2026 Peta Asia investigation that exposed workers for reportedly kicking, beating, and dragging sheep at a South Africa wool farm, which is one of 17 exposés the organization has released on the wool industry.