As much as I loved attending London Fashion Week last weekend one thing really dismayed me about the event and that was the abundance of real fur on show. Everywhere I looked I saw it and it instantly put me off a designers collection. I wish LFW would follow Oslo fashion week and ban fur. I’ve been anti fur ever since I was very young. I remember my grandma had a closet full of real fur coats that all the other girls in my family would try on and prance around in but not me. I would just glare at them disapprovingly. These days I still disapprove of fur but I don’t give those childish disapproving glares as each person has to decide for themselves what is ethical.
Now back to what I was talking about before I got side-tracked – The one place in Somerset House that I expected to be an anti-fur zone was the Esthetica exhibition. Esthetica is the British Fashion Councils programme that promotes and highlights up and coming ‘ethical’ designers. Obviously for them ‘ethical’ is a loose term open to interpretation. But for me it isn’t. Is it ethical to rear animals purely to butcher them? Is it ethical to anally electrocute them? To torture them and subject them to excruciating pain? Why do so many people only buy free range eggs but find it perfectly acceptable to buy real fur that may have been produced by suffocation, gassing or poisoning?
Did you realise more than half the fur in America is produced in China from the fur of dogs and cats? They aren’t killed humanely either with bludgeoning, being bled to death or being skinned alive being their methods of choice. In most cases you won’t even know whether it’s Chinese fur your wearing as it’s usually falsely labelled to encourage more sales and higher profits.
I’m not okay with vintage fur either (sorry to those of you that I know wear vintage furs I still love you but just don’t agree with it). The more people who wear any kind of real fur, the more acceptable it becomes to wear any fur. Animal cruelty is a cause close to my heart and it’s exactly why I choose not to wear leather either and it was behind my recent decision to go vegetarian. I don’t want to preach to you all but please before you go out buying fur have a think about where it came from if even for a minute.
I say no to fur!