Fashion insiders rally around CFDA’s Steven Kolb following front row fracas with PETA

Steven Kolb will live to fight another day — if the fashion industry has anything to say about it, at least.

On Monday, the CFDA boss was suspended from the powerful trade association after he wrestled one PETA protestor to the ground at a Fashion Week show on Sunday and tried to hold his hand over the mouth of another to stop them from chanting slogans decrying the wool industry.

But — while hand-to-hand combat at a work event would be a pretty obviously fire-able offense in most industries — Seventh Avenue seems to be rooting for him to keep his job.

“I actually think that he might have overreacted, but really he was – as the president of the CFDA – he thought he was protecting one of the designers,” designer Dennis Basso, who has has himself been targeted by PETA, told Page Six at his star-studded show earlier on Monday.

“I think it’s a case where it was bad judgement on the protester’s part. This protesting to me is in an un-orderly manner, is incorrect and inappropriate, and then you have to deal with it. I’m sure that’s he’s sorry for the way he reacted.”

Meanwhile, several sources tell us big-name designers and industry heavyweights like Anna Wintour are likely to back Kolb. The powerful Vogue editrix is famously loyal and, we’re told, usually willing to go to bat for friends and colleagues caught up in scandals. (Although, look how that worked out for John Galliano).

“What happened to grace and forgiveness?,” pleaded one designer. “Do we demand perfection from everyone in the world now? People have temporary lapses in judgement and moments where you can lose yourself, I don’t think it’s a pattern of behavior. He does so much to protect and support designers and the entire industry.”

“It’s so out of character for Steven,” another told us. “It’s so not who he is.”

Of course, it doesn’t hurt his case that PETA have been in-fur-iating the industry for decades, dumping red paint on pelts and even dropping a dead racoon on Anna Wintour’s lunch plate.

Fern Mallis, the creator of Fashion Week, told us earlier on Monday that she thinks that Cos, and its parent company H&M, should be taking more blame, adding that she favors a specific security firm that has “trained every one of their people to handle protesters because they are so used to that happening.”

(A rep for H&M Group tells us, “The safety of our guests, colleagues, and participants was always our main priority during the show, together with the event’s security team.”)

PETA has said the protesters are “filing a police report and plan to pursue criminal charges.”

Kolb issued a statement on Instagram, saying ““I reacted inappropriately to an incident at a show earlier today. It wasn’t my place to do so. I should have let the security team handle the situation.”

The CFDA issued its own statement on Monday afternoon, saying it was putting Kolb “on leave pending a full review.”

“The CFDA as an organisation is committed to working with dissenting voices to find commonality and is engaged in efforts to move the American fashion industry forward while upholding the values of our membership, including respectful engagement with differing viewpoints,” it said.

PETA posted on their Instagram saying, “The violence he showed mirrors the violence inherent in the wool industry, but the activists went home, while sheep end up in slaughterhouses. Sheep are beaten, bloodied & killed for fashion.”

CFDA announced in December that following “years of engagement with Humane World for Animals and Collective Fashion Justice” they were banning fur from the runway beginning this season.