Where Crocodile Skin Comes From

Snake, alligator, and crocodile skin patterns are popular on many handbags this season. For the economical handbag buyer, these skins are often patterns printed with a texture on leather, vinyl, or pleather and then colored – some to look natural, others to look like pink reptile skin. But high-end designer handbags are often made out of the real thing, be it python scales or authentic alligator or crocodile skin grown on a reptile farm. One such handbag brand is Hermes, and the brand with handbag Birkin is now under fire for its treatment of Australian crocodiles to make these high-end, specialized handbags which, for the time it takes to make a handbag, can be two years in the waiting from an order.

According to the article, the skins to make these handbags are tanned, dyed, and polished before going to Hermes to be picked out and made into a handbag, and this is after the three years the crocodiles are alive on a crocodile farm in Australia. The breed, an Australian saltwater crocodile, is considered to have the “perfect” skin to make handbags. As these authentic crocodile handbags appear on various A-list celebrities and the demand for the product grows, is this ethical in the name of fashion? If celebrities, and “normal” people, who can ordinarily afford a fur coat refuse to wear fur clothing because of how animals are treated, why are crocodiles given different treatment?

In some cases, according to the article, it’s to keep the crocodile population down and from spreading into residential areas. The crocodiles, instead, are bred on farms and, essentially, treated like chickens bred for meat and eggs: crammed into pens, fed protein to grow bigger and faster, and then shot in the head before being skinned.

As fashionable as a crocodile handbag, or any other animal skin handbag for that matter, may be, is treating animals in such a manner appropriate for high-fashion? Should celebrities, and others, now buying crocodile handbags stop buying the product?