The premise at the heart of fashion is that something that looked hideously out of date just a moment ago is suddenly the only thing that looks correct. Still, a few ideas seem destined never to make their return: fashion shows that appropriate garments from other cultures, heroin chic, the bizarre fad in the 1910s for the hobble skirt that made it nearly impossible for the wearer to walk.
You would think that fur might be included on that list, given that it has inspired multiple protests on the runway from organizations like PETA, even leading anti-fur activists to throw a tofu pie at Vogue editor Anna Wintour for sporting it.
And yet the controversial material seems to be making a comeback. It may no longer be the faux pas it recently was — or shall we say, fur pas.
Less than five years after Gucci banned the use of animal fur on its runways — and nearly three years after its parent company Kering did the same for all its brands, including Saint Laurent and Balenciaga — the status symbol appears to be having a revival.
Michael Kors, Prada, Simone Rocha, Miu Miu and Saint Laurent, to name just a few, all included fur or a fur-like material in their latest collections.
Some designers have found workarounds that give a fur look without the use of traditional animal fur. At Prada, for example, patches on cocktail dresses that appeared to be caramel mink or fox were in fact shearling, which is considered more ethical because it is a byproduct of the meat industry. Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu collection also included faux fur in the form of chubby coats that referenced the mid-century style of elegant Milanese women, which is celebrated by Instagram accounts like Sciuraglam.
Mrs. Prada’s furs struck right at the tension between shoppers’ desires and designers’ ability to deliver on them. When asked backstage if the Miu Miu fur was real, she grinned. “Noooo!” she said, laughing. “Shearling, shearling, shearling!” But it looked like “the old family fur coat,” said a reporter. “Yes — that was the intention.”
Saint Laurent, whose designer Anthony Vaccarello has designed without fur since Kering announced the ban in September 2021, looked to “a collection of Mr. Saint Laurent’s, but I didn’t want to do in fur because we don’t do fur anymore,” he said backstage. Instead, he used feathers gathered together to create a puffy, fluffy jacket.
Demna, whose label Balenciaga is also under the Kering umbrella, has gotten especially creative in his approach to creating fur-like looks and textures, using silk and feathers and even hand-painting linen to look like fur.
Why fur now?
It is possible that, as shoppers continue to be drawn to classics deemed “quiet luxury,” they see fur as an enduring symbol like an Hermès handbag or scarf, a tweed jacket or a pair of straight-leg jeans. A vintage fur is often more affordable than its new faux counterparts: A Gucci faux fur coat is selling on FarFetch for $5,100, while TheRealReal has a number of secondhand furs for about one tenth of that price. And with a vintage fur, there is less concern about the welfare of the animal, because it is long dead.
More immediately, designers are realizing that while faux fur may solve the problem of animal cruelty, it comes with its own problems. Jane Francis, an assistant professor of fashion at the Parsons School of Design who describes herself as an advocate for sustainability, said that “imitation or faux fur is problematic in a different way. It’s non-biodegradable. It’s fundamentally made from plastic.” While some designers, like Stella McCartney, are investing in research for plant-based faux furs, “but we are not at that stage yet,” Francis said, so some designers see real fur as the more ethical alternative.
Yves Salomon, the Paris-based furrier who has made fur coats for decades and supplies several fashion houses with furs, said in a recent interview that our recurring attraction to fur “is very simple: it’s beautiful. When you are wearing a fur coat, you feel different. And you have an emotion,” he said. “A fur coat, first of all, is glamorous. It makes men and women more open, more beautiful somehow.” He compares the emotional reaction to that inspired by jewelry.
Francis echoed that sentiment: “It’s a really complex and difficult conversation” to discuss fur in fashion, she said. “Fashion brands are always striving for something beautiful, and seductive, and desirable. And natural fur absolutely has that, because it comes from an animal, and animals are fundamentally beautiful.”
After the “low point” of several fashion brands banning fur three or so years ago, Salomon began seeing more women on the streets of Paris in the beginning of 2023 wearing “extreme fur — coats to the knee, coats to the feet, foxes, huge fur coats,” he said. “And that was not really coming from us, honestly. That was coming from the young people with a lot of TikTok [followers].”
The Mob Wife aesthetic, celebrating the gleeful excess of mafia-adjacent style on TikTok, embraced furs as a touchstone of its look. And on TV, the much-discussed debut of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” in January revived an interest in mid-century styles like full skirts and cocktail hats — garments that are often accompanied by fur coats or stoles.
Salomon said that many younger consumers see real fur as the more sustainable alternative to faux fur, which is made of plastic and oil. “It is not a secret that fur is the most sustainable product of the whole fashion industry,” he said. “Because you can recycle fur, right? You can recut an old coat, you can buy a [new] coat and in five years, you can remake it. You can have a fur for life.”
He also said that brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior — which are part of LVMH, which has not instituted any kind of rules around fur — have seen a lot of success with the material, especially in menswear.
Salomon has spent the past several decades developing practices to ensure his furs are sourced ethically. Every coat has a number that allows Salomon and the purchaser to trace the fur to the farm from which it came, some of which are run by native communities in Canada, but most of which are in Europe and independently audited “so we can be sure the animal welfare is respected.”
What that means, Salomon says, “the animal is living in a proper space. It means that there’s no injuries, no illness, and that the food is correct, and the animal doesn’t suffer.” Salomon said that this is essential to the quality of his coats: “The condition of the fur is directly connected with the way the animal is treated.”
He pointed to the recent Bloomberg expose about Loro Piana’s vicuña cashmere, which comes from a community whose workers are not paid a living wage, according to the report. “It’s very important to protect the native communities which are [making a] living from fur,” he said, such as the Inuit of North America. Fur coats also require a kind of craftsmanship that Salomon hopes to shield from decline — a concern that many fashion leaders in France have about specialties such as lacemaking, leatherwork and even hand-sewing. “We feel that protecting craftsmanship is a key issue today. We feel that fur must be part of the fashion world. And we give all the possible assurance that it is done in a proper way, and we can prove it.”
Francis emphasized that, “fur is 100 percent biodegradable. So therefore, yes, in effect, it is completely sustainable and completely ethical.” But in the last 30 years, “awareness has been raised and animal cruelty and animal rights issues that are absolutely relevant and critical to this conversation.”
“I think if we can return to a slower, more sustainable and circular system of fur production, as it was historically before it became, I guess, commoditized,” she said, “I think that would be a better future if we were more mindful of our fur production and honoring the beauty of that material.”
Still, some younger designers see fur as fundamentally untouchable. In a collection shown in Paris, the millennial-aged designers of Vaquera, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee, put gruesomely faux fur on wraps, gloves and jackets in a collection themed around the disgustingness of contemporary wealth. “We like a kind of gross fur, because fur is gross,” said Taubensee. “Fur is a classic symbol of wealth and fanciness, so it’s fun to subvert that a little bit and make it gross,” said DiCaprio.
“Especially real fur is like —” he continued.
“Disgusting,” finished Taubensee.
“The idea of cutting and sewing that — whew!” DiCaprio said.
“Cutting and sewing the faux fur is also disgusting,” Taubensee said. DiCaprio agreed. “It’s in your nose, in your bed at home, you’re hooking up with someone and you’re pulling faux fur out of their mouth. It’s a lot.”