When the long-simmering conflict between fashion's establishment and animal rights activism turned physical at a runway show, Steven Kolb — who had guided the Council of Fashion Designers of America for over a decade — chose resignation over continuation. The confrontation with PETA protesters, brief and still only partially understood, was enough to end a tenure that had shaped American fashion's public identity through seasons of mounting ethical scrutiny. His departure reminds us that the arguments once staged at the margins of an industry can, in a single unguarded moment, reach its very c