Rebecca Cappelli is an award-winning filmmaker and public speaker who explores subjects such

as animals, the planet, and vulnerable communities, focusing on animal rights. She is also a

photographer, animal rescuer, and educator. A French citizen based in Switzerland, Cappelli

speaks Mandarin and has lived in many parts of Asia. Leading the Let Us Be Heroes project, she

gives people the resources to empower and defend vulnerable communities, the planet,

animals, and health.

Rebecca decided to pursue filmmaking after her first short doc, Let Us Be Heroes, was released

on YouTube in 2018. “This first film process was smooth, and I got a lot of good feedback. After

releasing it, I decided to feature a documentary focusing on fashion because I used to be a

massive consumer of fashion. I spend a lot of money shopping for shoes, bags, clothing, and

everything, and I’m also a long-time animal lover,” she explains. The award winning piece led

Cappelli to create SLAY, a longer documentary that aligns with her belief system and values.

She believes sustainable fashion can not only focus on the ecological dimension of production,

but must also take into consideration the effects on animals and people throughout the supply chain. SLAY is a response to the interconnectedness of sustainability and ethicality, and seeks to

expose the stories of the fashion sector that don’t get told.

SLAY is about the production of leather for fashion. Her choice to focus on this material was

influenced by how prevalent and widespread its use is. Leather can include the skin of cows,

buffalo, goats, pigs, snakes, crocodiles, for which 1.5 billion animals die annually. It is often

advertised as natural and healthier than other materials, but the process of it getting to our

closet is something we rarely see or hear about. Spanning five continents and many

interconnected stories, SLAY’s exposure of this is extremely emotional.

“The leather process is so harmful,” she tells us. If you do not undergo an extremely

chemical-intensive tanning process, the skin rots. There is no way to avoid this when purchasing

skin products from the vast majority of businesses. “The leather we wear in western countries,

in the US, in Europe, in big capitals of the world, famous brands, etc. is usually tanned in the

global south. Countries such as India have almost no environmental laws or label laws to protect

the people that work in the supply chain, so it’s a huge issue that brands ignore.” We’re buying

leather that relies on deforested land in the Amazon and was tanned by people facing horrible

conditions and even human rights violations in India.

In some cases, the skin is finished closer to where it will be sold. In Italy, for example, there is

widespread discrimination against the immigrants who come to complete the leather making

process. “I’m talking about immigrant workers legally in Italy, who have been here for several

decades, they speak Italian - this is not a language problem. It is discrimination happening in the

industry.” For her, it was essential for SLAY to address how leather impacts animals, people, and

the environment at every phase of production.

In the filming process, knew she wanted to shoot in Italy because “it's not just about developing

countries and Global South countries. It's an uncomfortable process, but the good thing about it

is that it allows it to be the result and more authentic.”

SLAY is impressive in scope. It takes us through interviews with fur corporations, fur farm visits,

and tanning centers. As an unscripted doc, Cappelli’s reactions to the scenes were raw and

genuine. She had a rough idea and had done basic research prior to filming of who the crew

should talk to and what they might see. “My emotional response has been a vast range of

pain, sadness, anger, and shame. And I feel like we’re so ignorant.” It was shocking to try and

conceptualize the incredible number of people who suffer from this industry and its scale.

All of the shots in SLAY are from the crew’s first time on location. Cappelli told us that seeing

things like the leather tannery in India and the pollution in the Ganges River gave her a mixture

of negative feelings that were unexpected considering her previous exposure to the problems.

“One hundred million animals are killed yearly in these fur farms. Although I know these

numbers, although I've seen footage, I've seen videos - very graphic videos. I have known all

that for a while now, but still, I feel like being present and seeing them one by one in individual

cases... that was really, really intense and very overwhelming.”

After filming concluded, Cappelli has come away with the conviction that the dark underbelly of

the leather trade is really not that hidden from view. It’s hidden in the media, in branding and

marketing, and we as consumers even push what we know might be happening to a corner of

our minds when buying leather products, but the reality “is not hidden if you try to go and see

what is happening.”

“We were a small group - me, my cinematographer, and my assistant, and most of the time we

could easily access the places. I don’t see why brands can’t do that. How can they not do it

themselves?”

After shooting this movie, Cappelli tells us her overarching feelings about fashion and leather.

Even though sustainability and circularity are hot topics, and many alternative material methods

are being developed daily, even though rapid change is taking place, the scale of fashion is just

too large. Nevermind fast fashion, which the doc didn’t necessarily delve into specifically,

though the places seen they shot supply both fast fashion and luxury brands. New purchases,

even from luxury brands which are usually best-case scenarios from the leather sustainability

perspective, encourage a fast fashion like economy. Luxury brands overproduce a lot of

collections, and they constantly encourage consumption. To Cappelli, tackling the leather trade

is more a question of behavior and mindset. What is impactful is buying less and secondhand.

We should stop buying anything new. We should stop producing anything new.

The central problem when it comes to circularity, sustainability, and alternatives is that we

simply can’t curb our vast demand, even though technology exists to mitigate leather trade

impacts on a smaller scale. “Most people are conditioned to think that our happiness comes

from buying the next bag, the next shoes, wearing a certain brand, or looking a certain way.

And I think that there's nothing wrong with wanting to express ourselves with fashion. But we

miss the point because none of this will make us happy.”

She adds, “we need to engage consumers, we need to engage brands, we need to engage

organizations, we need to engage fashion professionals, students, and schools. There's a huge

amount of work to be done” that goes past engaging with the leather trade conversation at a

corporate or brand level. “We cannot just wait for consumers to become aware of these issues.

It's too slow.” One film won’t fix it all, but Cappelli sees SLAY as a good start to “ensuring that we

focus on skins and understand that animal skins are not material.”

When will we see change in leather production? Cappelli says, “I could see some evolution and

some improvements, and based on the reaction of fashion professionals that have seen the

film, I'm optimistic. I think we need big, big changes, but the reactions have been positive, and I

think that's quite encouraging. Yes, I believe we can be successful.” 

Cappelli calls us to define sustainability as synonymous with ethical production. “We cannot

create complex equations to force a definition of sustainability on something that requires

another being’s suffering.” If something is produced today, it should be sustainable for the

planet, ethical for people, and animal free. That's it. “We cannot compromise any of these

three.” Cappelli says that supporting collective fashion, and an ethical, just fashion system is the

key. She recommends supporting the European Citizen Initiative, inviting us to sign a petition to

ban first sales and fur farms in Europe. You can access the petition via Take Action on the SLAY

documentary website. You can also take part in the hashtag campaign #whatshouldIwearinstead. SLAY is now available on both Amazon and Itunes with subtitles in many languages, and we highly recommend.