The world’s first fur-free fashion course from a non profit

We’re marking ACTAsia’s 20th anniversary with 20 Years, 20 Wins, a series celebrating the milestones behind two decades of work. Win #8 takes us into fashion education and ACTAsia’s solution to the problem of how fur gets from farm to catwalk in the first place.  #8 of 20

A pipeline problem 

Fashion schools have long been part of the fur supply chain: design students are routinely given fur by the industry to work with as part of their training, so the habit of reaching for it starts long before a brand ever sells a product. ACTAsia can’t stop a fashion course from offering fur to its students. What it can do, however, is reach those same students first with the knowledge to make a different choice.

That bottom-up thinking shaped Compassion in Fashion, launched on the British learning platform FutureLearn as the world’s first fur-free and sustainable fashion course from a non-profit organisation. It was built in collaboration with John Lau, Dean of Academic Strategy at the London College of Fashion, who developed the curriculum and continues to advise ACTAsia on it.

Reaching the next generation of designers 

In line with ACTAsia’s holistic framework, Compassion in Fashion walks students through the fur trade’s toll on animals, people and the environment. It then asks students to examine the business philosophies of fashion designers and brands, and to use what they have learned to create their own manifesto for what compassion looks like in the fashion world. The course teaches fledgling designers how to enter the world of fashion with a keen sense of responsibility for the environment and the animals which have historically been exploited by the industry. Students walk away with a working framework that they can carry into their careers.

The response has been vast, with students joining from nearly 70 countries around the world. A Chinese-language version of the course also runs on WeChat, extending the same material to students and professionals across China. 

A standing seat at the table

The FutureLearn course sits alongside a longer-running partnership with the London College of Fashion, where ACTAsia has spent successive years co-tutoring a Collaborative Challenge unit on the college’s Masters programme. Fashion and management students work through the fur and sustainability issues as a required part of their coursework. It is the same instinct that led ACTAsia to build compassion education into a Chinese university’s philosophy degree, discussed elsewhere in this series: real change holds when an institution builds it into what students already have to complete, instead of an add-on or guest talk.

Why this win matters: Building from the bottom-Up

These milestone education initiatives do not stop a fashion house from sourcing fur today. What does happen, however, is that that every student who leaves the Compassion in Fashion course is one more designer, buyer or brand strategist who will not default to fur tomorrow. 

And this shift already is visible at the top of the industry. Major fashion houses and publications have made their own fur-free commitments in recent years, moves shaped by the very changes that ACTAsia encourages through education. The Compassion in Fashion course works on the other end of that same chain, ensuring that the next wave of designers, buyers and communicators never pick up unsustainable, unethical habits in first place. A habit that never forms will not need to be broken later. 

20 Years, 20 Wins 

Compassion in Fashion is still running, still training the students who will decide what the next generation of fashion looks like. If you would like to support the compassionate education and the fur free movement, learn how you can get involved and consider donating today. 

If you would like to support the research and programmes behind Compassion in Fashion, consider donating today. 

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