Steven Kolb Exits the CFDA After a Clash Over Certified Wool

Steven Kolb resigned as chief executive of the Council of Fashion Designers of America on Friday, five days after video showed him covering PETA protesters’ mouths at a COS runway show.

He had been on leave since Monday, pending a board review. His goodbye letter never named the protest. It did name sustainability.

He Put His Hands Over Their Mouths at Cos

The clash was on Sunday, September 13, at COS’s Fall-Winter 2026 show in Manhattan’s WSA building, just past the midpoint of New York Fashion Week. About five people from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals moved onto the catwalk with signs against sheep wool. Models kept walking. Music kept playing.

Kolb, 64, is the longtime CEO and president of the CFDA, the nonprofit that represents American designers and runs the official New York Fashion Week schedule. Video that spread online shows him grabbing two of the activists. He shoved Mason Melito, a PETA senior campaigner who was filming, and put a hand over Melito’s face. He pinned a second protester to the floor, wrapped a leg around her, and covered her mouth and nose as she shouted, “Sheep bloodied and beaten for wool.”

PETA called it an assault. Kolb later called it a mistake. Melito, writing days after the show, said he went to speak up for sheep and did not expect a fashion executive to try to silence him with force. He also said he was not physically harmed, and that a hand in his face was “nothing compared to what the sheep go through at all.”

Today’s actions show how top people in fashion use violence to silence people who expose how sheep are beaten, bloodied, and violently killed for scarves and sweaters.

Ingrid Newkirk, PETA founder, September 13 statement

On the clip itself, the fight was less about fiber than about who is allowed to put hands on a demonstrator in a packed room. Some viewers treated it as a citizen stopping a crash. Others, including people who dislike PETA’s runway stunts, treated a hand over a mouth as the line a CEO cannot cross. Security, not the trade-group chief, was supposed to move first. Kolb said so himself a day later.

The Same Letter Listed Sustainability as a Win

Kolb announced the resignation on Friday, September 18, in a Substack post. “After 20 years leading the CFDA, I have made the difficult decision to step down as CEO and president,” he wrote. “I am enormously proud of what we have built together and believe this is the right moment for both me and the organization to begin a new chapter.”

The board, chaired by Thom Browne, called him a dedicated leader and a tireless champion of American fashion through more than two decades at the CFDA, including 15 years as CEO. It said it respected his decision and that he leaves the group well positioned, with a clear mission and a dedicated team. It did not say he was fired. It did not describe the video.

Kolb’s own list of the past two decades included money, programs, scholarships, emerging designers, New York Fashion Week, and a wider global reach. Buried in that list was a phrase that now sits next to the clip: he said the organization had “advanced sustainability and circularity.” He said he was most proud of the impact on American designers. He thanked four chairs he served with, Stan Herman, Diane von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, and Browne. He called leaving after 20 years deeply emotional. He never mentioned COS, wool, or PETA.

That omission is the whole personnel file in miniature. The letter reads like a retirement toast. The week that produced it started with his hands on two people who had come to talk about sheep.

He had already written the anniversary version of this story. In January, he published a post marking twenty years since I started at the CFDA, dated to January 5. He said he had not come in as a fashion insider in the usual sense. He said he was still in service to students, startups, and an economic engine. Eight months later he was out, and the service record he chose to highlight included the same sustainability brief the protesters had come to attack.

H&M’s Certified Wool Was the Real Target

COS is owned by H&M Group. PETA did not pick the show at random. The group had been pressing H&M to drop wool after a PETA Asia investigation of a South African farm certified by NATIVA, a wool label used in H&M’s supply chain. PETA said workers there kicked and stomped on sheep and left gaping wounds after crude shearing, and that the farm sold wool through a broker supplying H&M Group with wool sold as responsible.

H&M Group said it takes such allegations seriously. It said all virgin wool in its products comes from farms certified to the Responsible Wool Standard, a third-party system owned by Textile Exchange. After the certification bodies looked at PETA’s claims, H&M said licenses for one mohair farm and one wool farm were suspended, and that those farms are no longer in its supply chain.

PETA’s larger brief is that the labels do not hold. It says its entities have now released 17 exposés of more than 150 wool operations on four continents, including farms marketed as ethical or responsible. Melito put the campaign in a straight line from fur bans at houses such as Gucci, Prada, and Michael Kors, and from New York Fashion Week’s own fur ban, to wool as the next material he wants off the runway. This COS action, several accounts of the week noted, was the first time fashion week protesters had gone after wool rather than fur.

HOW THE RESPONSIBLE WOOL STANDARD WORKS

That is the system H&M pointed to when PETA showed up at COS. PETA’s answer is that a logo on a sweater does not describe the shearing floor its cameras recorded.

WHAT PETA SAYS THE SOUTH AFRICAN FOOTAGE SHOWS

• Kicking and stomping: Workers kicking sheep in the head and body and stomping on animals that PETA describes as terrified.
• Blows and dragging: Sheep hit in the face with shearing gear or a piece of wood, and lambs picked up and dragged by their front legs.
• Open wounds: Fast, careless shearing that sliced skin and left animals bloody, plus a ram whose head hit the floor after a worker dropped a knee on its neck.
• The label fight: PETA says this happened at a NATIVA-certified farm, and that such stamps mislead shoppers; H&M says it buys RWS wool and cut two farms after reviews.

Throughout September, PETA also ran a Times Square message at Seventh Avenue and 43rd Street, near H&M’s store there, telling shoppers that sheep pay for wool garments. In late August it had already mailed a battered replica sheep named Lily to H&M Group president and CEO Daniel Ervér and promised storefront actions in U.S. cities. Kolb was not the named target of that campaign. He became the person in the frame.

What the Responsible Wool Standard Requires

RWS farms are scored on animal welfare, land, and labor, then audited each year. Mulesing is barred under the standard. Textile Exchange is moving the suite toward a single Materials Matter Standard, with a long transition. That does not answer PETA’s charge that a certified shed can still look like the South African tape. It is the answer the industry had on the table when Kolb put his hands out.

Five Days From the Runway to a Resignation

Kolb did not wait a week to apologize. He also did not survive the review he had invited.

THE WEEK THAT ENDED THE JOB

1. September 13, 2026: PETA disrupts the COS show. Kolb restrains two activists on camera. PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk accuses fashion’s top people of using violence to silence them.
2. September 14, 2026: Kolb goes on leave pending a full review. He says the leave is voluntary. A CFDA spokeswoman says the group takes the matter very seriously. On Instagram he writes that what happened was completely out of character and that he does not recognize that person.
3. September 14, 2026: In the same apology he says there is no justification for physically restraining another person, that security should have handled it, and that he should have stepped back. He says he is meeting with a professional, has accepted PETA’s offer to meet, and hopes to apologize in person to the two people “who did not deserve that treatment.”
4. September 16, 2026: PETA, through spokesperson Moira Colley, says filing charges is a consideration, but the main goal is a meeting with Kolb and H&M to walk through the wool investigations. Melito publishes his own account of being shoved and silenced on the catwalk.
5. September 18, 2026: Kolb resigns. The CFDA board thanks him and names no replacement. Colley says the Kolb meeting has been rescheduled and that both sides still want it. PETA says the incident that cost him the job would never have happened if H&M’s CEO had dropped wool when asked.

Four days of leave, then a resignation letter that reads as if the camera never existed. The board’s review never published a finding. It did not have to. Once the clip was the talk of later front rows, staying in the job meant defending the hands on the floor.

Thom Browne’s Board Has No Successor Named

The vacancy is larger than one bad Sunday. Kolb joined in 2006 as executive director when von Furstenberg became president, coming from nonprofit fundraising at the American Cancer Society and DIFFA, not from a design studio. He became CEO in 2011. The CFDA’s own history now leads with a line that would have fit his resignation letter: for more than a decade, sustainability has been an integral pillar of its work. The same history page records a membership of over 500 designers, the 2014 purchase of the Fashion Calendar that locked in the New York schedule, the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and a 2026 tie-up with Vogue and Rockefeller Center for a United Flags of Fashion project.

THE JOB HE LEAVES

• Tenure: 20 years on staff from 2006, 15 years as CEO from 2011, ended Friday, September 18.
• Chairs beside him: Stan Herman, Diane von Furstenberg (2006 to 2019), Tom Ford (2019 to 2022), then Thom Browne.
• Board around Browne: Vice chairs Prabal Gurung and Aurora James, with members including Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, von Furstenberg, Bethann Hardison, and Vera Wang.
• Open item: No successor named, and no acting CEO announced in the Friday statements.

This is the machinery that sets New York Fashion Week, runs the CFDA Fashion Awards, and funds new labels. It is also the machinery that now has to hire a chief who can keep protesters off a live runway without becoming the clip. The last person in the job tried to do that work with his own hands and was gone before the next Monday.

Browne’s board is a roll call of American fashion’s owners. They praised Kolb’s two decades and then left the chair empty. That is a choice, not a lag in a press release. A trade body that owns the calendar cannot sit without a CEO through the next season’s planning without someone, even quietly, holding the pen.

PETA Still Wants the Meeting Kolb Promised

PETA’s Friday statement did not treat Kolb as the prize. It treated him as collateral. The group said the incident that cost him the job would never have taken place if H&M’s CEO had, as PETA had asked “so many times,” moved to stop what it calls extreme violence to animals used for clothing. It said it will still meet with Kolb, and that it hopes others in the industry will take steps on wool and skins.

That meeting is now a meeting with a man who no longer runs American fashion’s trade group. Colley said on Friday that Kolb had rescheduled but that both parties remained interested. H&M, for its part, had already agreed to sit down after the COS chaos. Wool remains in the group’s collections, under the RWS claim, minus the two farms whose licenses were pulled.

Kolb said on Monday he hoped to apologize in person to the two people he grabbed. Melito’s public writing after the show was not about that apology. It was about getting wool off the rack. Newkirk’s ask on Sunday was the same: ban wool at H&M and COS, and shop elsewhere until they do.

The CFDA now has a clear mission, a dedicated team, and no chief. Kolb has a Substack valediction that talks about circularity and a clip in which he covers a woman’s mouth on a live runway. H&M still has a certification. PETA still has a farm video. The next CFDA CEO will inherit all three, and the knowledge that putting hands on a protester is now a five-day path out of the building.