My cold-weather wardrobe rests on black wool rollnecks, and until this month, I had given the sheep behind them roughly as much thought as the thread count of my socks. Then, a Sept. 13 video from the Cos runway show at New York Fashion Week reached my phone, along with more than half a million other screens.

The footage shows Steven Kolb, then-CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, shoving a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaigner and clamping a hand over his mouth before pulling a second protester to the floor. They had interrupted the show to denounce Cos’s parent company, H&M, for using wool.

Kolb was placed on leave the next day and resigned later that week — rightfully. A fashion executive who answers disruption with physical force loses any credible claim to leadership. His resignation also completed an extraordinary reversal: The protesters entered the room as intruders and left it with an apology, a promised meeting and the departure of one of American fashion’s most powerful officials.

PETA could hardly have scripted a cleaner victory — which is what worries me.

The response to Kolb has wrongly merged two questions: whether the protesters deserved to be assaulted and whether their argument deserves to be believed. Answering the latter requires examining an organization whose four decades of fashion activism have prioritized confrontations that generate media coverage over tangible action.

What the sheep actually need

PETA’s treatment of animals in its custody weakens its claim to speak for others: Its shelter in Norfolk, Virginia, euthanized nearly 60% of the dogs and cats it took in last year, according to its annual report to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Their case against wool is weakest on its central claim: Domestic sheep, merinos in particular, were bred to grow fleece continuously, so shearing is a condition for their health, not an imposition on it.

H&M adopted the remedies PETA had once demanded. It pledged in 2008 to stop buying mulesed wool, and its current policy requires wool to come from farms certified to the Responsible Wool Standard. The Cos protest therefore targeted the use of wool itself, a position no certification or policy revision could satisfy.

That demand is unreasonable. PETA has constructed a standard under which better treatment earns no distinction from abuse, because to PETA, the continued existence of wool constitutes failure. Absolutism gives companies no path toward responsible conduct besides surrender.

Better watchdogs exist

Fashion owes some of its reforms to PETA, particularly the anti-fur campaigns that helped move major fashion houses away from the material in the late 2010s. That history gives the group influence, though it hardly makes every animal-derived material interchangeable.

For example, fur requires killing the animal; wool is shorn from a living one. Yet signs carried into H&M’s London show just days after the Cos incident — “H&M: Wool is BLOODY Cruel. Drop It!” — treat the two as equivalent. The comparison is rhetorically useful but ethically careless; it erases distinctions a shopper needs in order to make a considered choice.

Other organizations pursue the same goals. FOUR PAWS and Humane Society International Australia track brands’ progress on mulesing, while Textile Exchange administers the RWS through third-party auditors who inspect each stage of the supply chain. Their work poses a question PETA’s campaign has abandoned: Under what conditions was this garment made? The answer can expose cruelty while leaving room for a farm to improve. PETA’s verdict came preordained.

That certainty is seductive. It relieves consumers of the untidy work of comparison and turns animal welfare into a loyalty test: Condemn wool altogether or accept complicity in cruelty. Consumers should distrust a moral framework that leaves so little room for evidence to alter its judgment.

How to ethically assemble the look

Begin with clothes that already exist. A secondhand sweater extends a garment’s life without creating demand for newly produced wool.

When buying new, check the care label and the brand’s sourcing policy. RWS or ZQ certification, or a non-mulesed declaration on Australian merino, offers evidence that a third party has examined the farm. Certification is not a perfect solution, but it is much more effective than a protest sign. Build the outfit around one black wool piece — a rollneck or a straight-leg trouser — and wear it with heavy-soled shoes you already own.

Before being moved by the next runway protest, identify its organizer, read the targeted company’s policy and check whether an independent auditor has certified its suppliers.

Julia Ho is a senior writing about fashion history, pop culture and the shopping decisions in between in her column, “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” which runs every other Wednesday. She is also a chief copy editor and the staff development director at the Daily Trojan.