New York Fashion Week Gets Wild With a Dinner for Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co. Roars During Fashion Week With Its Save the Wild Collection Dinner

“I feel as if I’ve landed somewhere very exotic,” Frank Pope said on Saturday night at Barbuto, from where he stood surrounded by rapt well-wishers from the worlds of Hollywood, fashion, “influence,” and whoever else summoned by the siren song of New York Fashion Week. As the CEO of the Kenya-based wildlife charity Save the Elephants, Pope continued, he’s used to an entirely different kind of jungle. The reason for Saturday’s migration to downtown Manhattan? To celebrate the newest Save the Wild collection of brooches and charms from Tiffany & Co., from which 100 percent of the proceeds go to the #KnotOnMyPlanet campaign benefiting the Elephant Crisis Fund and Wildlife Conservation Network. (The company’s first collection in 2017 initially aimed to raise $1 million for the Elephant Crisis Fund—a figure that it nearly tripled already; Tiffany & Co. has now increased its pledge to raise $4 million in total by December 2019.) “It’s a cause that we’re so grateful to you all for donating your time to support,” Tiffany & Co. chief artistic officer Reed Krakoff told the crowd.

The new collection, which has an articulated, rigorous aesthetic different than the previous abstract swoops, also includes animals other than just elephants, Knot on My Planet’s global ambassador Doutzen Kroes explained. The new recipients of Tiffany’s largesse will now also include the rhinoceros and the lion, the latter of which found a new ambassador in Jordan Barrett. “He kind of looks like a lion, doesn’t he?” Kroes asked.

This is a very troubling time for wild creatures in our world: They are under threat from all corners, Pope explained, as guests like Naomi Campbell, Rowan Blanchard, Jay Ellis, Liya Kebede, Freja Beha Erichsen, Bria Vinaite, Kelsey Asbille, Constance Jablonski, Mica Argañaraz, Imaan Hammam, and Xiao Wen Ju found their seats. Some species of rhinoceros are nearly extinct due to poaching, habitat loss, and political conflict; for largely the same reasons, wild lion populations across Africa have plummeted 43 percent since 1993, National Geographic recently reported. Ivory is increasingly outlawed across the planet, but a global market still prizes it: The recent poaching of dozens of elephants in the protected environs of Botswana underlined the ongoing nature of the crisis. Tiffany’s initiative has made a life-changing difference not just for the elephants but for the human beings who risk their lives every day to protect them, Pope said—but even those who are unable to donate can still make a difference. “If there is no demand for ivory” or for the other products of these animal slaughters, be they horn, tooth, or nail, “there will be no incentive for poachers,” Pope said, and here is where the crowd assembled could put their indelible influence to good use: “Let’s make it unfashionable forever.”