NYPD Arrests Spouse of Marc Jacobs VP during Anti-Fur Protest

The NYPD arrested the husband of Jennifer Sagum, a Vice President at Marc Jacobs, after he stole an iPhone from an animal rights activist during an anti-fur protest in front of the couple’s Brooklyn brownstone. Brian Moss, a partner at Coventry Real Estate Advisors, was charged with grand larceny, a felony.

Brian Moss, the husband of Marc Jacobs VP Jennifer Sagum, was arrested and charged with grand larceny after stealing the phone of an anti-fur activist during a protest at the couple’s Brooklyn home.

In an effort to resolve the conflict without making an arrest, the NYPD officer handling the theft made an appeal to the activist whose phone Moss stole. “He’s a professional. Honestly, he’s deathly afraid of being arrested and it affecting his career.” Moss works in financial services, an industry that is required under federal law to ban individuals convicted of felonies.

In response, the victim agreed to not press charges if Moss returned the phone. By then, however, it was too late. According to witnesses, Moss’s wife, Jennifer Sagum, had thrown the iPhone into a nearby sewer drain and could not retrieve it. After initially telling the police officer that he returned the iPhone to the activists, Moss acknowledged that he no longer had the phone in his possession.

During an anti-fur protest at the Brooklyn home of Marc Jacobs VP Jennifer Sagum and her husband Brian Moss, Sagum tossed the iPhone of a protester in a sewer drain after Moss grabbed it.

The theft of the phone and Moss’s subsequent arrest were not, according to the activists, the most dramatic moments of the two hour protest.  Before he was arrested, Moss dragged his young, visibly terrified daughter out of their house and down the front steps. According to the activists, he appeared to be using the presence of a child to demand that the activists terminate the protest.

Brian Moss dragged his daughter down the stairs while confronting anti-fur protesters at his Brooklyn home.

The protest was organized by animal rights activists in NYC in support of a national anti-fur campaign led by the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT), an organization whose campaigns have contributed to fur-free policies at several luxury fashion companies.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by CAFT (@caftusa)

Marc Jacobs is one of the few fashion designers that continues to use real animal fur. For years, advocacy groups have pled with him to switch to cruelty-free materials, as most other designers have done in recent years.

Fashion designer Marc Jacobs has refused to commit to a fur-free policy

In 2022, Jacobs told animal rights activists that he was no longer using fur, but, during a 2023 runway show staged in collaboration with Fendi, he featured a fox fur hat.

After telling animal rights activists that he was no longer designing with fur, Marc Jacobs showed a fox fur hat during a runway show

“On fur farms, wild animals suffer from the moment they are born until the moment they die,” said Tyler Bauer, an organizer with CAFT USA. “The animals spend their entire lives trapped in tiny wire cages, crammed by the thousands into squalid sheds, unable to take more than a few steps in any direction. This abuse of  fur-bearing animals must end.”

Foxes, raccoon dogs, rabbits, chinchillas and other animals killed for their fur go insane from the lifelong intensive confinement in cages.

CAFT organizers say the nighttime protest at the home of Ms. Sagum represents an escalation of their efforts because the more measured tactics employed in the past have been unsuccessful in compelling Mr. Jacobs to implement a fur-free policy.

Petition calling on Marc Jacobs to adopt a fur-free policy