Make Your Own Hermes Bag: PETA Launches Satirical DIY (Dismember It Yourself) Birkin Bag Tutorial

Apr. 25, 2025

A DIY crocodile-skin Hermès bag? That’s the idea behind a new PETA video directed by legendary music video director Dave Meyers, who has worked with Kendrick Lamar, Missy Elliott, Ariana Grande, and Harry Styles, among many others. In the clip, a fashion vlogger teaches their audience how to make a “Hermès Birkin bag” from scratch, starting with a live, three-year-old crocodile.

The video—created in collaboration with The Community ad agency—shows the content creator assembling all the tools needed for the job: some glue, a ruler, a tarp for the floor, a knife, and a screwdriver, before getting to work. “You’re going to grab your long screwdriver, and it takes a bit of strength, but just plunge it into the brain and shove it down the spine,” the vlogger says, as blood splatters everywhere. “We’re going to peel this bad boy like a banana. It’s going to look so classy!”

PETA Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor said:

"Fashionistas wouldn’t want to be caught dead with a Birkin if they had to make one themselves by hacking an animal to pieces. PETA calls for consumers everywhere to drop animal skins in favour of luxurious vegan accessories that no one had to be butchered for.”

 

In nature, baby alligators “chirp” from inside their eggs to signal their mother that it’s time to hatch, while crocodiles form strong social bonds and can live to 80 years old. PETA's undercover exposé  into farms that supplied reptile skins to Hermès-owned tanneries revealed crocodiles crammed into filthy concrete pits and alligators packed into fetid pools, where they languished for months before being violently slaughtered. Workers were documented cutting into young alligators’ necks—while they were still conscious—and ramming metal rods down their spines or into their brains to kill them.

A growing number of top designers—including Chanel, Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham, Burberry, HUGO BOSS, and Vivienne Westwood—have banned the skins of tormented wildlife from their collections. PETA is calling on Hermès to follow suit.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.