Blood Feathers
World Animal Protection and Collective Fashion Justice have published Blood Feathers – a major new investigation into the ostrich feather industry and its relationship with global fashion.
Between 2023 and 2025, the organisations conducted desktop research into the ostrich feather industry and fashion supply chain. In 2026, World Animal Protection commissioned an on-the-ground investigation in South Africa, the dominant global supplier of ostrich products.
The findings make difficult reading. Investigators were told that ostriches at one farm were live plucked every six months. They also documented feather cutting and subsequent shaft removal, and found numerous instances of blood on harvested feathers – raising questions about claims of ethical cutting practices.
The report also challenges the idea that commercial ostrich feathers are collected through natural moulting. Based on the evidence gathered, it concludes that large-scale supply through natural moulting appears biologically and commercially implausible.
But Blood Feathers isn’t only about exposing the problem. It also asks what fashion could do next.
Its Innovation Beyond Feathers section explores how moving away from feathers could expand, rather than limit, creativity – and features FEVVERS and our Stella McCartney debut as an example of material innovation already beginning to rethink what is possible.
For us, that’s the opportunity: not recreating the past without the animal, but giving designers new materials to create with.
