"The price tag is an extravagant £22,000, the coat itself the flagship item in Burberry’s spring-summer collection. But this is no ordinary trench coat. Made of peacock feathers, and worn recently by American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, it is the iconic British fashion label’s most talked-about garment of the moment. This trench is setting the fashion world on fire."

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that the peacock feathers used to make the garment came from birds raised on farms in India. There is, however, one insurmountable problem: it is illegal to export peacock feathers from India. Not only is it that country’s national bird, sacrosanct to the Hindu religion, but its numbers are also under serious pressure from expanding agricultural operations and poachers. Rather than waiting for the peacocks to moult their tail feathers as they do naturally every year, the poachers kill them and rip out the feathers, which are then smuggled for sale abroad.

'Anyone with an ounce of compassion should steer clear of these products and opt for any of the many fabulous, humane, synthetic fashions available,' says a spokesman for animal rights charity PETA.