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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: December 2006

Fur trim trade exploits ambiguous attitudes

 

LONDON--Fashion superstar Kate Moss designs garments for Topshop, a firm with a policy against using fur--but as a model, the role that propelled her to fame, Moss wears furs for Burberry. Her paradoxical alignments reflect the ambiuity of a fashion market in which traditional highpriced fur coats have been "out" for nearly 20 years, yet cheap imported fur trim is selling as never before.

The London Independent in a series of November and early December 2006 features reported "a growing backlash against soaring sales of fur," which has yet to show much sign of reversing the fur trim boom.

British fur sales are up 30% in two years, The Independent said, "with £41 million of new fur products," about 1,000 tons' worth, "imported every year into a U.K. market now worth an estimated £500 million."

"As real fur continues to be bought and sold," The Independent continued, "imports of fake fur have dropped from £3 million in 2002 to £1million in 2006. In contrast, 88,000 kilograms of mink worth £16 million came into the U.K. last year. Customs figures show that seal pelt imports rose from 3.6 tons in 2004 to 4.1 tons last year," wrote Independent reporters Jonathan Owen and Marie Woolf.

 


"In 2004, the U.K. imported almost a third of the value of all Canadian seal skins into the European Union. Such is the scale of alarm at the rise in fur use that the government is moving to ban all imports of harp and hooded seal products into the U.K.," Owen and Woolf added.

"Global fur sales reached a record £6.6bn in 2005, according to the International Fur Trade Federation," said Owen and Woolf.

Observed Liz Jones of The Daily Mail, "In the Prada store on Old Bond Street, almost every garment was bedecked with fur--on pockets, on sweaters, on skirts, on belts, on helmets. I rummaged for something to wear that hadn't been strangled, or drowned in a bucket, or hung by its hind legs and skinned alive, or electrocuted anally. When I asked the shop assistant to help, she shrugged her bony shoulders and went off to help someone else, who I noticed was wearing a black fur-trimmed jacket.

"Jane Bruton, the editor of Grazia magazine, told me that the other day a young member of her staff had turned up to work in a fur coat," Jones continued, "and when berated for doing so, wailed: 'But it's vintage.' When Jane asked her if she would wear something with new fur trim, she replied that she would-- that she 'wouldn't even think about it'. Sixteen years from the first 'I Would Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur' billboards," asked Jones, "how on earth did British women become so cruel?"

Observed Alison Hardie of The Scotsman, "High Street is less gung-ho" than either the upper or lower ends of the price range. "Topshop, Hennes, Gap, and Marks & Spencer all have an anti-fur policy," Hardie noted. "Joseph is one of the few U.K. retailers to stock fur. It sold a rabbit fur coat to Cherie Blair recently, to the disgust of animal rights groups. However, that 'sin' by the Prime Minister's wife appears to have made little impact on fur sales, which have been boosted by photographs of celebrities including Elizabeth Hurley, Beyoncé Knowles and Jennifer Lopez wearing fur."

Hardie appeared somewhat skeptical about a British Fur Trade Association claim that some 400 top designers now use fur, since in her experience, "Finding anyone in fashion to go on the record about being pro-fur is almost impossible."

Hardie then debated both sides of the fur issue with herself, reciting the arguments pro and con as they might be perceived by many well-informed non-activists.

"I do not own a fur coat," she wrote, "but I do own a cashmere coat with a fox collar and a wool cape trimmed with mink. I have been working hard ever since I left school at 16, and I consider that I deserve these modest fur accessories. Fur is exquisitely warm, and extraordinarily comforting next to the skin," Hardie claimed. "It is also natural. I abhor deliberate cruelty to animals," Hardie asserted, "but I eat animals and animal products. I wear leather. I cannot see any moral difference in eating a piece of lamb and wearing a piece of fur," Hardie said.

"As the anti-hunt lobby is partly fueled by class hatred, so some anti-fur campaigns are driven by a Puritanical hatred of adornment," Hardie alleged. "If fur wearers decided to put on a coat of rats' tails instead of foxes' tails, would there be the same objection? I think not," she said, disregarding that defense of laboratory rats and mice is among the most enduring causes in animal advocacy.

Hardie responded to herself by acknowledging that, "Every year, more than 50 million animals are killed worldwide so that their fur can be used by the fashion industry. More than 30 million animals are bred and killed on fur farms, kept in barren wire cages scarcely bigger than the animals. Constant stress and deprivation can lead to self-mutilation. The animals are usually killed by gassing, anal electrocution or lethal injection. Others are clubbed or have their necks broken.

"The fur industry goes to great lengths to hide the horrendous suffering involved," Hardie wrote, "but undercover investigations have shown the brutal reality.

"For the majority of the public, fur remains an unethical relic that has no place in a compassionate society," Hardie concluded.

While garments featuring cheap fur trim are moving in department stores, all is not well for traditional furriers.

"Schumacher Furs & Outerwear, after 111 years of business and one solid year of fervent animal-rights protests, is hanging it up in Portland," reported Spencer Heinz and Seth Prince of The Oregonian on November 29.

"We're leaving downtown Portland because we feel that it's losing its appeal for people to shop in," said owner Gregg Schumacher, 51. "The panhandling, the musicians on the street, the urination in the parking garages. Yes, the protests. The place is not conducive to running a retail operation." Betting the other way, several major new retail, hotel, and residential complexes opened recently within walking distance of the Schumacher store, with more to open, or reopen after remodeling, in early 2007.

The "Women's Fashion Fall 2004" edition of The New York Times Style Magazine featured fur on 36 of 270 pages, as many as included fur in 2001-2003 combined, but "Women's Fashion Fall 2006" displayed fur on just 21 of 300 pages, mostly as trim, without any depiction of traditional coats. A two-page article on fur included a variety of critical remarks, rarely seen before in New York Times fur coverage.

Much of the growth in the international fur trade reflects the emergence of an upscale consumer fur market in China, which until recently imported pelts almost exclusively for manufacturing into exported finished garments.

The Danish auction house Kopenhagen Fur, owned by a collective of about 2,000 fur breeders, claimed record sales of $893 million during the fiscal year ending in September 2006, with 80% of the sales volume coming from China and Hong Kong,

"Kopenhagen Fur produces about 40% of the world's mink, accounting for 90% of the furs" it sells, wrote Tasneem Brogger for the online magazine Bloomburg.com.