A few weeks before Manhattan’s vintage show was opened this month, the owner, Amy Abrams, a “fur-a-palooza”, in which sellers set an increase in the demand for fur in the field. “It is happening now,” she said.
The racks of Fox, Mink and Mongolian at Booths, including the Igala NYC and the Jennie Walker archive, that sold a sable jacket for $ 2,495, were swollen by shoppers, many who already wore fur.
A shopper, Lulu Dinh from Jersey City, NJ, bought her Chinchilla jacket from 1stdibs years ago. With a collection of about 10 fur that have been taken over over the years, she was not on the market for something new. “I already have the best,” she said.
The Vintage Fur-a-Palooza of Manhattan was not an isolated incident. While the temperature in New York collapsed in the teenagers and the 20s in January, women and men throughout the city took their fur out of storage in what felt like an abrupt reversal in social attitudes.
After decades of coordinated campaigns, with protests and even personal attacks outside of shops and fashion shows, at workplaces and human houses, the anti-Fur movement, led by organizations such as PETA, finally shifted the tides to their advantage. Many brands, and customers, decided that being fur -free was a better look.
It happened slowly – Calvin Klein forbade fur in 1994; Ralph Lauren in 2006 – and then all at the same time. After Gucci announced in 2017 that the real fur would eliminate in its collections, the big luxury fashion houses followed: Michael Kors, Burberry, Prada, Versace, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs and more. Since the introduction of its label in 2001, Stella McCartney has been a fiercely vocal animal and cruelty-free lawyer. Fendi, which was founded in 1925 as a fur and learning store in Rome, and is owned by LVMH, remains one of the last luxury holdouts.
By 2021, Kering, the parent company of Gucci, which is also the owner of Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and McQueen, had published a group -wide ban on fur. That did Hudson’s Bay, the Toronto Retail Company that owns Saks Fifth Avenue and started as a fur trade in 1670. Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus stopped selling new fur. In 2023, California has a law in force that prohibits the sale of new fur products.
The fur industry has been shrinking for years. According to the Fur Free Alliance, global fur production has fallen by 85 percent over the past decade. Roughly 20 Million Animals Were Killed as Part of the Fur Trade in 2023 versus 140 Million in 2014. The Number of Fur Farms in the European Union Fell to 1,088 in 2023 from 4.350 in 2018. (A Major Exception is Sharling. Free ”Fashion houses and retailers continue to use and sell sheep skin and cowhide, considered by -products from the food chain.
For years, in a large part of the United States and Europe, has felt the wearing of real fur taboo. Apart from, suddenly some people do not seem to give it – especially if the wearer can make the mantle of ‘vintage’ apply, because no animals are killed fresh and old clothing upcycles are more virtuous than buying new.
Even if in some cases vintage does not always mean affordable. The 1st dibs site reported an increase of 14 percent in fur sales in 2024 above 2023. Remarkable purchases include one 1997 Gucci Fox Fur Chubby That was sold last year for $ 30,257.41.
Rihanna was photographed with a vintage John Galliano Mink in December. Last month Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner and Hailey Bieber were spotted in Aspen in different fur coats. Kendall Jenner wore a vintage Balenciaga Fox Fur from 2011, but it was difficult to distinguish the other fur – Real or Faux? – without confirmation. The representative of the Jennners and the stylist of Mrs. Bieber did not respond to requests for clarification.
Whitney Robinson, 42, a hospitality entrepreneur and editor in New York, also spent his vacation in December in Aspen in a complete Coyote jacket that he described as “Part Joe Namath, partly Salvador Dalí.” He bought the jacket two years ago from Crowley Vintage in Brooklyn.
“The reaction depends on where you are,” said Mr. Robinson. “In St. Moritz, Fur is everywhere – maybe it’s a Milanese case – so nobody has closed an eye. Aspen was the same this year. Everyone loved it. A man in the twenty at Vail airport gave me a thumb up and said he loved my kit. “
The full-length Yves Saint Laurent Mink that Mary Connelly, 34, a lawyer who lives in the East Village in New York, wore one afternoon last month to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She bought it in Chicago in the 1970s when she was a stewardess.
“This was her big purchase,” said Mrs. Connelly. “She was on a payment plan. It has embroidered her name in it. “She noticed that it was her mother’s idea to pass it on. “She said:” I see many girls wearing vintage fur. Do you want mine? “”
Carly Mark, the designer of the model line/art project dolls and dolls, recently moved from New York to Paris. “Everyone is wearing fur here too,” she said.
After years of using Faux Fur, Mrs. Mark started working with Recut last year, Upcycled Fur in her catwalk collections.
“What I learned from that process is that I really like fur,” she said, specifically talking about vintage. “It’s nice and it already exists.” That said, she received a considerable anti-fur recoil online after her fall 2024 dolls and dolls show.
“I think people really misunderstand vintage fur versus faux fur,” said Mrs. Mark. Vintage, in her eyes, is the superior sustainable option. She mentioned plastics and microplastics in faux fur fibers, often made from materials based on petroleum, as “worse for the environment in the big whole.”
Marie Laffort, a fashion stylist and owner of Ancien Vintage at the Lower East Side in New York, is “confused by the whole debate,” she said. Mrs. Laffort sold her collection of vintage fur 10 years ago. “Now it seems that nobody is bothered,” she said.
“In With The Old” seems to be the philosophy that feeds the revival of De Bont. Heirs, vintage fur or fur that are at least a handful of years old, are good to go. Fur is part of the popular Tiktok -Eesthetics, such as ‘Mob Wife’, with its decadent fusion of fur coats, learning and leopard prints and adjacent to ‘old money’ and ‘rich girls’, full of wealth significations.
Is it a coincidence that the striking fur matches the new political order and his nostalgia for culture from the Reagan era? Maybe nobody loved a fur coat than Ivana Trump.
“Vintage fur is perhaps one of the few things that fans still find in the ideological spectrum,” said Anthony Barzilay Freund, the editor of 1stdibs. “For conservatives, the jackets can be worn unapologically if they continue to what they have in mind as a post-PC world. For liberals they are a permanent symbol of their dedication to retro chic recycling. “
The popularity of the fur look did not go unnoticed by the animal rights groups. Peta is satisfied with the proliferation of Faux fur, but regards those who choose vintage coat as misleading as well -intended.
“These are people who would usually never dream of buying new fur because they don’t want to support violent, cruel industry,” said Ashley Byrne, director of PETA of Outreach Communications. “It still endorses the idea that it is acceptable to crush the bones of animals in falling or to electrocute or gas.”
Animal rights groups see vintage fur as a dangerous trend. “If someone sees a person wearing used coat and they don’t know it is used, they can very well buy new fur,” said PJ Smith, the director of the fashion policy for the Human Society of the United States.
Mark Oaten is the Chief Executive of the International Fur Federation, a fur trade organization, and as such are his faithful square with real fur. He is located in Great Britain, the home of perhaps the most advanced animal rights movement in the world. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in 1824, is the oldest organization for animal welfare in the world. England and Wales were the first countries to ban fur heat in 2000. Fur has been corrupted there for decades, and yet Mr Oaten witnessed a new embrace of vintage coat among people in the thirty and 40s.
“I think when animal rights groups tips to give people and try to forbid things that mainstream people want people,” he said. Mr Oaten suspects that a recoil against activism will go to fur sales. If it is not scientific in terms of data, the feeling is certainly in the air.
