Chanel has become the first luxury fashion house to scrap using exotic animal pelts such as crocodile, lizard and snake skin - a move welcomed by animal rights groups on Tuesday.

Luxury accessories made from such materials have hit peak prices in recent years. Chanel handbags coats and shoes made from snake, alligator and stingray skin have reportedly sold for up to €9,000 ($8,000).

But Chanel’s fashion head Bruno Pavlovsky declared that the brand beloved of stars from Jackie O and Grace Kelly to Cara Delevingne "would no longer use exotic skins in our future creations”.

“We are finding it harder and harder to acquire exotic pelts… that meet our demands ethically speaking,” he told Le Figaro.

Chanel had been faced with two alternatives, he said: finding a way of “cleaning up the sector”, which looked increasingly difficult moving forward, or “depriving ourselves of these materials by inventing a new generation of ultra-luxurious products.”