Early last week I got a text from a friend I’ll call Penny: “What’s the read on wearing a fur coat right now?” Penny had inherited a gray fox-fur coat from her grandmother—and the below-freezing temperatures had her thinking it was time to break it out. “I sometimes get looks out in Brooklyn, but nobody bats an eye at me in Manhattan,” I replied. At the end of the night, Penny sent me a follow-up outfit pic with the text: “I felt perfectly fine wearing it at The Mark.”
Fur was a hot topic of conversation throughout New York Fashion Week—and during multiple meetings at the Vogue office. So we debated it out: Is vintage fur now okay to wear?
Margaux Anbouba: Hi everybody, thanks for being game to talk about a quite controversial subject. You all know I have quite the collection of vintage fur—both inherited from my family and purchased over the years. I wore it throughout NYFW, and real fur is everywhere on the streets. That doesn’t surprise me—it’s warm, and it’s chic—but I know some of you are surprised by its resurgence.
Nicole Phelps, Vogue Runway director: I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. I’ve spent my career watching trends come and go, but fur’s return has taken me aback. Maybe it’s all the years of PETA protests I’ve witnessed on the runways? I see young women wearing long vintage furs with their workout clothes and sneakers on the weekends, which, for me, accentuates their “let me eat cake” rejection of the antifur movement.
Alyssa Hardy, digital director, Teen Vogue: Most of my fashion friends own vintage fur, but the question has been whether to wear it in a high-visibility way. I’ve been entirely plant-based for 20 years and don’t own any fur—it’s not exactly something I feel comfortable wearing given that lifestyle choice. On top of that, no one in my family has ever owned a fur to pass down (which I know is how many people acquire them).
Alexandra Hildreth, fashion news writer, Vogue Runway: The mob-wife-trend madness really helped break the dam when it came to bringing real fur back into the mainstream. Most of my circle agreed that vintage or secondhand is more sustainable than faux. Now the topic has come back up not so much as a reopened debate but as a fascination with the vibe shift in the mainstream conversation: Is faux fur actually sustainable? And more importantly, is the resurgence of fur in fashion a dog whistle for conservatism?
Christian Allaire, senior fashion writer, Vogue: I would say there is still a lot of skepticism around it, but people believe that vintage furs are at least a more ethical way to wear fur, and people are also waking up to the fact that many faux furs are, in fact, made of plastics and not very environmentally friendly.
Lilah Ramzi-Goettleman, contributing editor, Vogue: I was once a pescatarian—which perhaps sounds oxymoronic in the context of owning fur—but I’ve always thought about consumption in layered ways. I’m far more concerned with overproduction and disposability than with heirlooms. There’s something deeply chic about rescuing a coat that’s been sleeping in cold storage for decades and putting it back on the street.
Phelps: I think there’s a vintage market now, at least, in part because most fashion brands have pledged not to make new pieces with real fur.
Laird Borelli-Perrson, senior archive editor, Vogue Runway: I always imagine all of the faux-fur coats being produced right now melting into a puddle of plastic. The idea of reuse and recycling can include vintage fur. The question for me is whether wearing vintage fur increases the appetite for lookalikes—either faux or new fur.
Anbouba: This year I both inherited a few fur coats and bought a vintage closet sight unseen that had about 30 in it. A Substacker I follow, Emily Stochl, went to two vintage markets in February and said that vintage fur was everywhere at the market and they were the first things to sell. I do think this year’s extremely frigid temperatures gave those pieces a boost in desirability.
Borelli-Perrson: Context is important in the fur conversation. At Copenhagen Fashion Week, I saw a number of real furs with vintage cuts. Fur was a huge industry there, honed over centuries. I saw an exhibition at the Design Museum there that asked: What happens to these age-old skills when fur goes out of fashion? It was an open-ended question and one I think about often.
Hardy: The negative impacts of new fur on both the planet and animals are simply too big to ignore. Vintage fur is a different story, and I do think there’s an argument for it being out in the world—though, personally, I do not feel great about it.
Ramzi-Goettleman: There’s certainly a stigma around fur, though I find it softens considerably when the word vintage precedes it. Honestly, if we’re assigning stigmas, I’d argue fast fashion deserves far more scrutiny than someone wearing her grandmother’s sable—if she’s lucky enough to inherit one.
Anbouba: I agree! Somebody on the subway recently said something to me about the vintage fur coat I was wearing. They were wearing all branded fast-fashion pieces—and I gave them a comeback saying as much.
Phelps: The CFDA’s New York Fashion Week fur ban goes into effect in September 2026. But even as the industry deepens its antifur commitments, the culture is going in the opposite direction. I’m fascinated by the phenomenon because the years of PETA protests at fashion shows have had their intended effect on me. I do see it as an ethical issue. The shearlings in my closet are warm and cool-looking, but I don’t wear them.
Allaire: I grew up around my uncles and cousins hunting moose and would witness all of the work that goes into cutting and curing the meat, let alone scraping the hide and collecting the fur. A lot of people don’t recognize how much care and thought go into utilizing animals from an Indigenous POV. When we wear fur, it does not just represent a fashion choice—we are also ensuring the animal’s spirit lives on well after its initial use.
