Fashion Untamed: The Fur Debate
Fur kills animals, fake fur kills the environment, and Schiaparelli’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection has made the long-debated topic more alive than ever.
When Schiaparelli sent its spring/summer haute couture collection down the runway in January, it sent the fashion world into an uproar.
One look featured a three-dimensional wolf head perched on supermodel Naomi Campbell’s shoulder. Other looks featured the forms of lions and snow leopards accenting gowns and coats. Even the front row was in on the action, with uber influential guest Kylie Jenner also wearing Schiaparelli and sharing the spotlight with an enormous lion head attached to the dress.
Although each one of the renowned French fashion house’s wild animal accents was artificial, crafted from fake fur and felt, according to the brand, the collection brought biting criticism from fashion critics and the social media-posting general public alike.
The brand’s Instagram account alone, tens of thousands of users registered their displeasure using words like disgusting, repulsive and cruel. One commenter called it “Collection by Cruella De Vil.” Another commented, “this is tone deaf fashion at its finest.”
The fact that no animals were harmed in the production of the clothing was irrelevant. Among the criticism: that the collection encouraged the usage of fake fur, a textile that can be a sustainability nightmare, and it glamorized the exploitation of animals through trophy hunting.
Fake or real, fur has long been controversial in fashion. But it wasn’t always that way. It was simply a natural material that was warm and long-lasting, and businesses built on the trade date back to the 1500s. Royalty and the wealthy classes coveted rarer types of fur like mink, which became associated with luxury and status. In North America, the fur trade flourished, fueled in part by the European fashion market, which used beaver fur to make hats.
The fur trade faced some challenges, especially from over-hunting and growing popularity of silk — but it also surged. Technology advancements at the turn of the 19th century improved the conversion of pelts into textiles, speeding the process and producing furs with more shine and a silkier feel. The wealthy continued to covet fur, and its popularity endured. A Vogue article from 1929 said it all — it announced that the type of fur you wear reveals the “kind of woman you are and the kind of life you lead.” By the start of the 1950s, the popularity of fur was at an all-time high.
At the start of the 20th century, some companies started manufacturing a velvet-like textile marketed as fake fur, but it didn’t really gain traction with consumers until World War I, when wartime taxes imposed on furs made the alternatives more attractive. Thanks to increased demand and improved technology, quality improved. By the start of the 1960s, faux fur was able to resemble real fur in appearance, if not touch, according to the Smithsonian article.
By that time, however, people had begun to question the ethics of fur. Protesters picketed Saks Fifth Avenue in 1968, and in 1971, movie star Doris Day announced in an ad that appeared in New York Magazine that “killing an animal to make a coat is a sin.” Public concern began over killing big cats in the wild, but soon grew beyond conservation to include concern over the well-being of all animals farmed for fur.
In 1980, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded, and thanks to the efforts of celebrities and influential figures backing the movement, plus changing times and fashion tastes, fur has largely fallen out of fashion, disappearing from designer collections and stores.
“Hundreds of major designers and retailers have banned it, and so has the state of California,” says PETA’s Senior Director Danielle Katz. Indeed fashion powerhouses like Versace, Armani, Gucci, Givenchy, Prada and Michael Kors are just some of the brands to ditch the use of real fur in recent years. London fashion week eliminated fur from runways in 2018.
“Fur? I’m out of that,” Donatella Versace told the New York Times in a 2018 article. “I don’t want to kill animals to make fashion. It doesn’t feel right.”
Over a dozen countries have outlawed fur farming, and the industry, once valued at $1.8 billion, has been on a steady decline since the early 2000s, says Katz. According to the Department of Agriculture, the production of fur has declined in America by around 45% in the last 20 years. This decline, says Katz, reflects an evolving world and audience that values sustainability and ethics.
Schiaparelli is among the fashion houses that does not use real fur in its designs. Its Spring/Summer 2023 show was no exception. So what sparked the controversy? Critics say that the hyper-real animal heads in the collection encourage the use of faux fur, a textile with its own set of significant, albeit different, problems.
Among the issues? It can’t biodegrade and it’s made from synthetic fibers like acrylic and polyester, plastics made from petroleum, which don’t biodegrade, says Charles Ross, head of sustainability and supply chain management at Saga Furs.
In a 2017 Business of Fashion article titled “Faux Fur vs. Real Fur: Which Is More Sustainable?” M.C. Nanda explores the effects of faux fur on the environment. It’s related to water contamination, which harms wildlife, and when discarded, it takes up space in landfills because it can take up to one thousand years to break down. (In contrast, real fur can biodegrade in six to 12 months, says Ross.) Even worse, when faux fur does break down, it just turns into microplastic fibers, which contribute to plastic pollution, according to a study from Organic Waste Systems in Ghent, Belgium.
Also problematic is the promotion of realistic fake animal heads at all, and the message it conveys to the world, courtesy of the glamorous world of fashion, celebrity and influence.
Animals should not be considered commodities, says Katz, and wearing fur, whether it’s real or fake, sends the wrong message of animal exploitation, says Katz.
The Schiaparelli show notes state that the “faux-taxidermy creations” depicting a leopard, lion and the she-wolf representing elements from Dante’s Inferno, like lust, pride and avarice. But Charlotte Regan of World Animal Protection believes the hyper- realistic depictions of animals in the collection glorifies trophy hunting, “which is disgusting, violent an non-progressive.” Animals, she says, should not be depicted as fashion statements.
What is clear, however, is that the debate will continue well beyond the publicity surrounding Schiaparelli’s collection. To find out what that will be, simply follow the next fashion week.