In an impassioned letter posted to his personal Instagram account, Marc Jacobs has announced that he and his staff are being bullied by anti-fur campaigners. “Dear Bullies”, the caption began, addressing one specific anti-fur group who he declined to directly name. “I feel your hate, anger and pain. I respect your 1st Amendment rights, as I do everyone’s. What I cannot sit back and watch are the unjust and hostile verbal, mental and physical attacks on the innocent people I work with at MARC JACOBS.”

“It pains me to give in to bullies,” Jacobs continued. “I had given into bullies much of my young life. Unfortunately, in my current situation with a radical organization (who will remain nameless) claiming to care about the lives of animals while endangering the well-being of innocent individuals and communities leaves me no choice but to give in to a bully.”

Although he declined to name the group in his post, The New York Times reported that the group Jacobs is referring to is CAFT, the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade. The grassroots organisation, which was founded in the USA in the early 1990s, “selects targets and disseminates information and resources to anti-fur activists on the ground,” according to the NYT.

CAFT began protesting Marc Jacobs in June 2023, as a result of the label’s collaboration with Fendi in September 2022. At that SS23 show, neon fox fur bucket hats were shown on the runway, and while Fendi women’s creative director Kim Jones confirmed that they were made from a real vintage piece, the hats were catwalk-only, and not produced for general sale.

In the rest of his Instagram letter, Jacobs addressed the Fendi collaboration. “MARC JACOBS has not used fur since 2018,” he said. “I chose to work in up-cycled fur when I collaborated with another brand in 2022. Whether that was a mistake or not, is subjective. I have always done my best to listen, then speak my truth and accept responsibility for my actions.”

Jacobs went on to say that CAFT has “made it clear that they will not stop their violence toward MARC JACOBS unless they get the statement they want,” and while he doesn’t condone their alleged intimidation, he wants to make his company’s position clear. “This is my statement,” the designer concluded emphatically. “MARC JACOBS does not work in, use or sell fur, nor will we in the future.” To hammer home the message, Jacobs also accompanied the caption with a graphic that displayed the Wikipedia definition of bullying.

CAFT protestors originally targeted Marc Jacobs’s offices at the start of their campaign, and then moved on to his employees homes in February 2024. Jacobs himself was targeted as he made his way to the Met Gala in May, and in the last week alone six arrests were made in relation to the protests. One of the people arrested was the husband of Marc Jacobs vice president Jennifer Sagum, who took a mobile phone from one of the campaigners, and another incident included a broken window at the company’s HQ.