Nicolas Poitou's anti-fur poster is a model of simplicity and power: Its dominant element is a picture of a sleeping red fox, his eyes gently closed, with his multicolored muzzle nestled into his own soft coat. The photo has all the serenity of a prayer—until you notice the red tag attached to the fox's pelt.

The tag reads, simply enough, "Size 38." In the lower, right-hand corner of the poster, a strip of the photo appears to be torn away in haste, as if someone ripped it in anger. In its place, there is a sentence that reads: Your coat had a life before you took him.

"I have been enormously impressed by the depth of creativity that went into the making of this poster—the simple and striking message it conveys about the basic wrongness of turning animals into clothing," noted Dr. John Grandy, The HSUS's Senior Vice President for the Wildlife and Habitat Section. "I doubt that anyone of any nationality will look at this image and be unmoved by what Nicolas Poitou has done."

Case in point: Poitou's poster, titled Size 38, was named the Grand Prize winner of the Fur Free Alliance's International Design Against Fur contest in Paris, a city not usually known for its putting animal welfare above the women's fashions. The fact that Fur Free Alliance, an international coalition of some 35 leading humane and conservation organizations (including The HSUS), decided to host the Design Against Fur awards ceremony during Paris Fashion Week in mid-October was both a purposeful irony and a pointed commentary.

This juxtaposition was beautifully underscored during a brief speech by Bellerive Foundation President and Fur Free Alliance patron, Princess Catherine Aga Khan. The princess openly criticized famous fashion designers for ignoring the animal cruelty required to produce the fur garments they shamelessly promote on runways all over the world.

"Quite apart from the cruelty," said Princess Catherine, "the violent world in which we live every day does not look kindly upon fur coats, an exterior sign of ostentatious richness that is provocative and anachronistic. Couldn't the designers take into account animal suffering and abolish the fur license? Financially, they could all permit themselves to do this. Everybody knows today that you can keep warm without wearing fur. And what fur? Dyed in all the colors of the rainbow, we can no longer distinguish real from false, or whether it is mink, rabbit, dog or cat&"

Such sentiments clearly carried over into the works of hundreds of design students who submitted entries for the Design Against Fur contest. Their charge was to create an innovative campaign to convince the world that "fur does not belong in the 21st century, and the use of fur and fur trim should be obsolete." Students were asked for not only a poster design, but also a concept for a $100,000 (or 100,000 Euro) advertising campaign, including marketing materials, T-shirts, and media spots, among other things.

The top three finishers in the preliminary design competitions in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom were flown to Paris for the finals, where their works were voted upon by members of Fur Free Alliance.

Grand Prize champion Poitou, a 25-year-old art student at Belgium's Institut Saint-Luc de Tournai, had already won the European round of the Design Against Fur contest. For his victory in Paris, Poitou earned $5,000 and the opportunity to see his design featured in an educational campaign that would include posters and T-shirts.

Among the other winners was Daniel Howton's "Barcode," which earned the Marchig Award—named for the award's sponsor, Genevan Jeanne Marchig, who founded the Marchig Animal Welfare Trust in memory of her late husband, Italian painter Giannino Marchig. Howton, an 18-year-old first-year college student from Bedford, England, described his design as a "graphic reminder of the true suffering behind the consumer barcode."

The runners up were Marc Choi of James Madison University in Virginia and Johna Caggiano of Parsons School of Design in New York. Choi, winner of the North American round, which was judged by celebrities such as fashion designer Todd Oldham and cartoonist Patrick McDonnell, won with his modern and innovative entry "Fur—hang it up for good."

Caggiano won second place in the North American round with a design featuring a family of red foxes accompanied by the caption "Here's a Sneak Peak at this Year's Newest Fall Fashions."

The HSUS's Grandy explained that one of the main goals of the contest was to open the eyes of future designers to the cruelty of the fur industry.

"Design Against Fur has been an outstanding success, not least of all because it has given student designers a forum for expressing their views about fur," Grandy noted. "It is gratifying that these young people—some of whom may be future stars of the fashion and design worlds—find the use of fur so outmoded and morally repugnant."