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Over the last decade, fur fell out of favour. Starting in 2018, a run of brands like Gucci and Chanel and retailers like Nordstrom banned fur in their collections and from their sales floor, as donning animal pelts — be they real or faux — became passé. They followed in the steps of leaders such as Vivienne Westwood, Ralph Lauren and retailer Selfridges, which already had fur bans in place, due to the “serious animal welfare issues” built into how it’s produced.
Then the Autumn/Winter 2024 runways brought fur roaring back into fashion.
Fur first re-entered the scene in the lead-up to this season when the “mob wife” aesthetic began trending on TikTok, with sheer stockings, red lipstick, leopard print and big furs dominating social feeds. It raised sustainability advocates’ eyebrows. Then, the trend came to life. Designers from Luar to LaQuan Smith in New York, Simone Rocha and Roksanda in London and Dolce Gabbana in Milan each sent fur looks down the runway. Street style images across each city have revealed that showgoers are also, once again, sporting furs.
Much of it is faux, some of it is real. (And sometimes, supposedly faux fur is actually real.) From a sustainability perspective, which one is used doesn’t matter much in the end: both are deeply problematic. Real fur is associated with extreme cruelty to animals, while faux fur is made with plastic and intensive chemicals, both of which fashion pledges to be moving away from. It also sheds microplastics, which end up in water supplies — and in animals as well as our own bodies — another issue that fashion has promised to be working on.
But what if it’s vintage? Grandmother-style fur coats are particularly trendy now, the idea being that if the fur coat already exists, then it might as well be worn rather than discarded. (Animal advocacy groups say there are other options, such as donating them to wildlife rehabilitators for use as bedding and comfort to injured and orphaned animals.) But, aside from the pros and cons associated with any of the individual materials, they all point to the same underlying conundrum: if fur of any kind is fashionable again, the overall appeal of the fur aesthetic will increase. And once a look is trending, it takes on a life of its own. There’s no telling how clothes that will inevitably be made to fulfil the growing demand are going to be produced.
Given the proliferation of retailers that have banned fur and the industry’s across-the-board sustainability pledges that seemingly should move brands away from both real and synthetic fur, many are left wondering why fur has been trending not just across TikTok but throughout fashion month as well.
“The conversation [has shifted]”, says José Criales-Unzueta, fashion news writer at Vogue, referring to brands that have now leaned into the aesthetic. “They’re not designers dressing this old-money woman who lives on Park Avenue. They are dressing the cool kids.”
A real comeback, or a flash in the pan?
The tidal wave against fur is likely at least part of what made it so appealing to the designers that used it this season; it’s in a designer’s blood to stand out, and to want to generate newness.
“How do you make something new? You use the one thing no one’s using,” says Criales-Unzueta. It’s also possible that because the issue of fur had begun to seem like one for the activism history books, the feeling of urgency for why it became such an issue in the first place has faded. “Now that we’re not all necessarily holding hands and saying fur is bad, [it’s allowed to come back]. The problem is out of sight, out of mind, in a way.”
Vogue Business reached out to a number of brands, including Luar, LaQuan Smith, Roksanda and Simone Rocha, to discuss their use of fur or what their faux fur looks were made of, and to retailers including Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus to discuss how they will handle the growing presence of fur or faux fur on the runways given their fur-free policies — are we likely to see any companies walking those policies back? — as well as their sustainability pledges. Some declined to comment; most did not respond.
Advocates say they’re not too concerned that fur will start flooding sales floors. The policy wheels are too far in motion to allow fur to gain real traction. Bans on real fur have come not only from brands and retailers, from Kering and Burberry to Nordstrom and Selfridges, as well as a growing number of fashion weeks, such as Copenhagen and London (as of this season), but from governments around the world as well, including many European countries banning fur production and governments including California, Israel and Australia’s largest city Sydney banning fur sales.
“Fur’s actually the lowest it’s ever been,” says PJ Smith, fashion policy director at the Humane Society, referring to data on both US sales and production for as far back as such data is available. “I’m confident that the public policy, the corporate policy progress that has been made on the fur issue — brands going fur-free and cities, states banning fur sales — will make it really difficult for a trend to make fur relevant again. There’s a risk, but I’m confident it’s not a big risk.”
Nicole Rawling, chief executive officer at non-profit Material Innovation Initiative, thinks the policy pressure will only continue to grow. “I expect to see governments passing regulations that require reporting of GHG emissions. This will put pressure on [the] industry to move to more sustainable materials,” she says. She also thinks consumer sentiment has shifted decisively away from fur. “Consumers are more educated than ever about the harms of fur production and intensive animal agriculture… Even if people don’t extend their compassion to animals like raccoons and foxes, they generally abhor the killing of dogs, which are commonly used for fur and falsely labelled as another animal.”
And the brands using real fur aren’t going unnoticed. The Humane Society staged a protest this month against Max Mara, which Smith believes is the largest company still using fur aside from Fendi; animal rights group Collectif Sipe targeted the brand in the fall as well. (Fendi declined to comment for this story; Max Mara did not respond.)
The path to better faux
Faux fur is generally made from either PET or acrylic, according to Martin Mulvihill, chemist and founding partner at investment firm Safer Made. Most PET is petroleum-based, while acrylic fibres are polyacrylonitrile; it’s hard to square an increase in production of any of these substances with fashion’s sustainability commitments, which — whether the goal is climate, water pollution or the use of toxic substances — all depend at their core on decreasing fossil fuel consumption, including petroleum-based synthetics, to be successful.
“Acrylonitrile is pretty nasty stuff. It is reactive, liquid, harmful to the eyes, skin, lungs and nervous system. It may cause cancer,” says Mulvihill. He is clear that faux fur itself does not pose the same hazards to the person wearing it, because the final compound that the fibres are made from has been stabilised. But risks to the consumer almost always pale in comparison to the very significant impacts that the manufacturing process has on both factory workers and on local environments.
New takes on what faux fur is made of and the rise in next-gen materials could make it a better option down the line. Several looks on this season’s runways were not fur, but decidedly fur-like (which is part of a larger trend of designers making one material look like another and throwing some question marks into whether things are what they seem. See: Bottega Veneta transforming leather into realistic denim). Gabriela Hearst showed coats with woven cashmere that was sheared with vertical lines to look like fur. Diesel worked wonders with denim and tufted knitwear (following Ukrainian designer Ksenia Schnaider’s debut of denim fur several years ago). Rachel Comey used fringe to simulate (but also differentiate from) fur.
In the immediate term, these options won’t change the fact that customers may only want to emulate the look of fur, without paying attention to the fabric source. Looking ahead, however, Rawling is optimistic. “Within the next few years, there will be another option to fur that doesn’t harm animals and doesn’t have the same negative environmental impacts of synthetic furs: next-gen fur,” she says, “which do not harm animals, use no petrochemicals, and have significantly lower GHG emissions, chemical use, water use, land use and eutrophication.”
She points to Biofluff as one example, a startup that makes bio-based materials and launched collaborations with brands including Stella McCartney and Ganni in recent months.
“While [next-gen] fur still has a way to go to mimic animal-based and synthetic fur, the industry has just started and it takes time to develop a new material. What we need now is more commitment from fashion brands and more investment to make these materials a reality,” says Rawling.
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