Steven Kolb Leaves the CFDA Five Days After COS

Steven Kolb resigned Friday as CEO and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, five days after video showed him pinning PETA protesters at a COS show. The CFDA board named no successor.

The same New York Fashion Week was the first on the official calendar under the group’s own ban on animal fur, a rule Kolb had sold as a way to make American fashion think harder about animals. PETA used that line on wool. Then the tape took over.

Five Days From the COS Runway to a Resignation

Kolb, 64, had been a fixture in the front row for a generation. On September 13 he left his seat. By the night of September 18 he was out of both jobs, and the board still had no one to name in his place.

FIVE DAYS INSIDE THE CFDA

1. September 13, 2026: At least five PETA protesters interrupt COS at the WSA building, 175 Water Street. Kolb restrains two of them on camera.
2. September 14, 2026: The board puts him on leave pending a full review. He calls the leave voluntary, apologizes, and says he will meet PETA and a professional.
3. September 16, 2026: PETA says H&M has agreed to meet, and that COS is looking into what happened at its own show.
4. September 17, 2026: Three PETA protesters walk the H&M runway at London Fashion Week with signs against wool. Security removes them. No trade-body chief is on the floor.
5. September 18, 2026: Kolb says he is stepping down as CEO and president. The board thanks him and names no successor.

PETA’s Friday line treated the exit as a consequence, not a graceful handoff. “This unfortunate incident which has cost Mr. Kolb his job, would never have taken place if the CEO of H&M had, as PETA requested so many times, taken action to avoid extreme violence to animals exploited for clothing,” the group said, adding that it would still meet him.

What the Video Shows at 175 Water Street

COS, the H&M Group brand, was showing in lower Manhattan when protesters moved on the runway with signs against sheep wool. Security walked most of them out. In the corner that the camera kept, Kolb did the work himself.

He pushes a young man later identified as Mason Melito, a PETA senior campaigner, and puts a hand over his mouth. He then holds a woman on the floor, a leg wrapped around her, a hand over her mouth and nose while she shouts about sheep beaten for wool. The COS managing director can be seen grabbing an arm as Kolb pulls her down. Kolb is also holding a protest placard.

PETA’s same-day account of the clash called it an assault on two supporters, with a third joining the wool protest. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s founder, said the scene showed “how top people in fashion use violence to silence people who expose how sheep are beaten, bloodied, and violently killed for scarves and sweaters.”

🚨 THIS JUST HAPPENED AT NYFW!

A woman who crashed the NYFW COS runway, part of @HM group, to expose the suffering of sheep used for wool was grabbed and restrained, with her mouth covered, by Steven Kolb, @CFDA CEO and President. pic.twitter.com/Gga9VWWmSz

— PETA (@peta) September 13, 2026

Hours after the show, Kolb posted that he had “reacted inappropriately,” that it was not his place, and that he should have let security handle it. On September 14, after the board’s leave statement, he went further. “There is no justification for physically restraining another person,” he wrote, calling the episode “completely out of character for me, both personally and as a leader.” He said his actions were wrong, that he was deeply sorry, and that he had accepted PETA’s invitation to apologize in person.

The tape is not a close call. The fight that followed was about whether a trade-body chief belongs on the floor at all. A runway crash is a trespass, and any sports arena would send security. That is a real point, and it is also the point Kolb conceded in his first post: the job of putting hands on people was not his. He did it anyway, in a room full of phones, and the clip did not age in his favor as the week wore on.

Moira Colley, PETA’s senior director of media relations in New York, said the group had looked at a police report, then dropped that path after visiting police and talking to lawyers. The meeting, she said, was the aim: wool and animal skins off clothing, not a booking.

The Fur Ban Took Effect for Official September Shows

On December 3, 2025, the CFDA, which owns the Fashion Calendar, said that from September 2026 it would no longer permit animal fur in collections on the Official NYFW Schedule, and would not promote it on the calendar, site, or social channels. Farmed or trapped fur from animals killed for pelts, including mink, fox, rabbit, karakul lamb, chinchilla, coyote, and raccoon dog, is out. Fur from Indigenous subsistence hunting is the stated exception. The group had worked for years with Humane World for Animals and Collective Fashion Justice.

There is already little to no fur shown at NYFW, but by taking this position, the CFDA hopes to inspire American designers to think more deeply about the fashion industry’s impact on animals. Consumers are moving away from products associated with animal cruelty, and we want to position American fashion as a leader on those fronts, while also driving material innovation.

Steven Kolb, CEO and president, CFDA announcement, December 3, 2025

That rule landed on this season’s official shows. PETA noticed. In a letter after the COS clash, the group told Kolb the fur ban was “a meaningful step” it had celebrated, and that it heard he may have had a role in it. “Now we must ask that you bring that same willingness to examine the evidence against using wool,” the letter said.

Fur was the line the calendar could draw. Wool was the fiber still on the clothes, still in the lookbooks, still treated as a natural material some guests were surprised to see targeted. The protest was not a random crash. It was a test of whether “impact on animals” stopped at pelts.

PETA’s Wool Case Against H&M Group

PETA did not pick COS at random. On April 27, 2026, it released what it called the first PETA Asia investigation into a NATIVA-certified South African wool farm that sells through a broker supplying H&M Group with wool marketed as responsible. The farm, PETA said, also carried the Responsible Wool Standard.

H&M Group’s answer is certification. It says the wool for its brands is either certified by Textile Exchange’s voluntary Responsible Wool Standard or comes from certified recycled sources, that it takes the allegations seriously, and that it has been in close contact with Textile Exchange. RWS is a voluntary farm-to-business standard covering animal welfare, land, and social rules; Textile Exchange is moving its suite toward a single Materials Matter Standard. H&M has also said the farms in that probe are no longer certified. PETA’s position is that no label makes wool kind.

HOW FUR AND WOOL SIT NOW

The April release is graphic on purpose, because the campaign is built to make a sweater look like a shearing floor.

WHAT PETA ASIA SAYS IT FILMED

• The kicks: Workers kicking sheep in the head and body and hitting faces with shearing gear.
• The wood: Sheep beaten with a piece of wood, lambs picked up and dragged by the front legs.
• The ram: A worker dropping a knee onto a ram’s neck so the animal’s head hits the floor.
• The cuts: Fast, careless shearing that slices skin and leaves gaping, bloody wounds.
• The lambs: A dead lamb on the farm, and a lamb with a maggot-infested wound the farmer blamed on a jackal.

Tracy Reiman, PETA’s president, said every wool probe the group has run finds sheep “beaten, kicked, and sliced to pieces, no matter what humane-washing label is slapped on their wool.” PETA entities now cite 17 exposés of more than 150 wool operations on four continents. Throughout September it also ran a Times Square message at 7th Avenue and 43rd Street, near H&M’s store there.

H&M has moved on other animal fibers when pressed. In 2021 it worked with PETA on a Co-exist Story collection of plant and recycled materials. In 2024 it committed to stop selling virgin down. Wool is the fiber it has not dropped. COS, for its part, said it respects the right to express views and believes everyone should be treated with care and respect, a line that sat beside pictures of a woman held on the floor of its own show.

A 20-Year Operator Leaves No Named Successor

Kolb became executive director in 2006, the same year Diane von Furstenberg was elected president, and he became CEO in 2011. The board’s Friday note called him a dedicated leader across more than two decades at the CFDA, including 15 years as CEO. He framed the same span as 20 years leading the group.

On January 3, 2026, he marked the coming 20-year date, January 5, in a personal note. He wrote that he had not arrived as a traditional fashion insider, that he was still in service, and that “an anniversary is a marker, not a finish line.” He said he was still there, still learning. Eight months later he was gone.

His resignation list is the record he wants read instead of the clip: a stronger balance sheet, more programs and partners, more scholarships, help for new designers, work on circularity, more room for people from underrepresented communities, a louder New York Fashion Week, a wider reach. “What I am most proud of is the impact we have had on American designers, supporting creativity and helping businesses grow,” he said. He thanked members, staff, and the four chairs he served with: Stan Herman, Diane von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, and Thom Browne.

The CFDA is the nonprofit that represents American designers, runs the official NYFW calendar, and backs the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and the CFDA Fashion Awards. Thom Browne chairs the board. Prabal Gurung and Aurora James are vice chairs. The board also includes Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Diane von Furstenberg, and Bethann Hardison. Lisa Smilor, the executive vice president, is the senior staff name left on the public roster. None of them was named as the next CEO on Friday.

Why the Board’s Review Never Reached a Public Finding

The September 14 board statement said the CFDA took the matter very seriously and that Kolb would be on leave pending a full review. It also said the group was committed to working with dissenting voices and to “respectful engagement with differing viewpoints.” Four days later the review had no public result. The exit was issued as his decision, which the board said it respected, with the stock phrase that he leaves the group well positioned.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The jobs: Kolb is out as CEO and president, effective with Friday’s statement.
• The tape: He restrained two protesters at COS on September 13 and later said there was no justification for it.
• The calendar: Official NYFW is fur-free this season; wool was never part of that rule.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The review: No public finding, no described process, no stated reason the inquiry ended when he quit.
• The next chief: No search, no interim title, no timeline from the board.
• The meetings: PETA still planned to sit with Kolb; H&M’s sit-down was promised, not described.

Calling it a personal choice keeps the board off the hook for a firing in the middle of Fashion Week. It also leaves a hole. A full review that never speaks cannot set a rule for the next person who watches a protester reach a runway. Designers who wanted a quiet transfer after 15 years as CEO got a vacuum instead.

Thom Browne’s Board Now Has to Hire in Public

Browne’s board now has to hire a public face for American fashion while PETA is still on the wool file and while H&M Group, whose COS show supplied the clip, is still answering with RWS paperwork. The next CEO will inherit a fur-free official calendar, a membership that still uses wool and leather, and a week that proved a trade-body chief can become the story by leaving his chair.

PETA said Friday it would still meet Kolb. That meeting, if it happens, will be with a private citizen. The calendar he ran, and the fur rule he announced in December, stay with the CFDA. Wool stays on the clothes.