subject: Fur Is Returning Big Time Here Is Why [print this page] An industry spokesperson attributed the rise primarily to two factors: designers who have incorporated small amounts of fur into a wider array of garments, making fur an option in warmer climates, and "a younger generation whose passion is not animal rights."As we recently learned, the fur industry is booming. Global fur sales rose by 70% from 2000 to 2010. Annual sales of fur pelts reached $15-16 billion, according to the fur industry's trade association, during the winter of 2010-11 (pelts are sold during a season that runs from around October through March, and the 2010-11 season is the most recent for which figures were available).
This development is surprising to anyone who remembers the highly publicized battles over fur and animal welfare of the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, shocking depictions of the cruelty inherent in fur production often in the form of polemical and, critics said, misleading videos produced by pro-animal-rights fringe groups were only starting to reach a wider audience. Protesters were omnipresent at fashion week and public pressure to avoid fur was high. Anna Wintour was served a skinned raccoon at the Four Seasons. It seemed like every week another of your favorite celebrities was stripping off for a PETA ad. By turn of the millennium, the moral issue of fur seemed settled, and fur itself seemed like a relic of a bygone age something that your grandparents' generation had misguidedly believed was okay, like golliwog dolls or smoking during pregnancy. The idea of wearing something so thoroughly politicized and icky as fur just seemed ugly. Popular culture kept up with the times: when Lily Esposito chided Mary Cherry for her mink coat on Popular, Mary Cherry looked like the spoiled, amoral wench that she was.
But during the 2000s, things changed. Designers who hadn't previously shown fur on the runway began showing it; designers who had previously shown some, showed more. Designers who had publicly pledged to abjure fur, like Giorgio Armani, went back on their word as did a good number of those overexposed PETA "faces." (Naomi Campbell even went so far as to do an ad campaign for the furrier Dennis Basso.) Fur began to creep back into fashion magazine pages. 1990s grunge and minimalism gave way to 2000s bling and ostentation. And now, fur is back in a big way. This year's fall runways? Among the designers who showed fur and/or shearling were Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta, Prada, Rebecca Minkoff, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tom Ford, Vivienne Westwood, and Yves Saint Laurent.
This reversal is not merely the result of a cultural trend meeting its inevitable backlash. It's also a story of economics, and of the fur industry's quiet battle to rebrand its product as sustainable, natural, and luxurious.
Fashion is still a very top-down business. A fur coat in a designer's fall collection might retail for $10,000 and be ordered by a handful of stores; but that fur coat's value in visibility for fur as a whole helps sell thousands of $60 rabbit-trimmed Michael Kors hats and $400 coyote-trimmed men's jackets at Macy's. To help make fur a trend that pops up in magazine editorials and online, fur suppliers often sponsor designers, giving them free product to incorporate into their seasonal collections and even sending them on junkets.
In 2010, the New York Times reported that one Scandinavian supplier, Saga Furs, gave fur to Cushnie et Ochs, Thakoon, Brian Reyes, Wayne, Derek Lam, Proenza Schouler and Richard Chai. It also paid for three designers to go on a junket:http://www.cwmalls.com/men-s-fur-leather-coats-luxury-designer-black-fur-lined-leather-coat-cw819436
