Artificial fur is a necessity for the fashion industry. But what is sold as a fake is actually real.
It has a raccoon bandit mask, but it's softer like a wild Pomeranian. Most American consumers may have never heard of this species. Before 2005, video clips of raccoons raising and killing millions of raccoons in China's fur market began circulating on the Internet.
But where did the felt go? The Humane Society of America (HSUS) has begun investigating the use of raccoon fur because it is not sold as much as fox or mink fur.
PJ Smith, fashion policy director at HSUS, said, "Then we saw an advertisement that said raccoon, Finnish raccoon, Asian raccoon." "Even worse, I saw it coming into 'artificial fur.'"
pulling the fur over the snow
HSUS and other animal advocacy groups abroad began testing products from several brands and retailers just three years after the viral video was released, and found many items marketed and sold as artificial fur containing raccoons, coyotes or other real fur. The United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom are just some of the markets where consumers can find real fur pretending to be animal-free.
Nearly 20 years have passed since animal rights groups began labeling artificial fur with the wrong labels, but the problem still remains. Smith said, "In 10 minutes, we were able to find cases that were mislabeled and mis-advertised as real artificial fur." Artificial fur is too realistic to distinguish real from fake easily, and real fur becomes cheaper.
Most of the products were "artificial fur" trimming from hoods or cuffs and items such as fur-lined shoes and key chains. Consumer Doubt: Real fur, or fake fur, was being sold at a low price. Most people expect real fur to be more expensive than materials made from synthetic fibers.
Smith said, "Real fur has a history of being a luxury. But thanks to the burps, I was able to wear the fur on very cheap clothes." And the price of real fur has fallen, thanks not only to consumer demand for artificial fur, but also to an oversupply of intensively farmed fur in China. The fur trim of farm animals such as raccoons has become an attractive choice for companies looking to add luxury to their products while saving money.
The news media quickly got the news and consumers were terrified. At one time, people may have been angry to learn that expensive mink was actually rabbit fur, but it was not about fraud but about ethics. People wanted fake fur. They didn't want to wear dead animals. Switching the two is like offering a beef burger to a vegetarian. One BBC presenter said: "It was enough to think that people who are thoroughly opposed to the fur industry may have mistakenly purchased items that support the fur industry. Tweets, causing "some panic".
the fashion of artificial fur
Humans have been wearing fur for almost 100,000 years. It was practical at first. Preserved leather was a by-product of hunting that could keep the wearer warm. But fur soon became a symbol of social status and hunting skills, Jonathan Fiers wrote in Fur: A Sensitive History. In the Middle Ages, society had laws that prohibited low-class people from wearing top-notch imported fur. Fur has become more than just clothes. It was a visual clue to the class-based system. At the height of the North American fur trade in the 19th century, people called fur "pensions." The fur itself was valuable enough to be used as a currency.
Until relatively recently, people only had fake fur because they couldn't afford the most expensive version or because the fur dealer cheated. In 1923, a New York Times article warned readers of unscrupulous fur dealers trying to trick rabbits into expensive fishermen, goat fur into monkey skin, and musk rats into seal skin.
Textile manufacturers have been able to make soft fur-like materials using cotton velvet since the early 1900s. In the mid-1900s, oil-based synthetic fur woven from file fabrics (imagine fabrics made from upright loops like carpets) began to gain popularity. In 1964, they have a representative 10 percent women's court market.
However, no consumer was at risk of mistaking these products for real fur. Since the invention of the first polyester and acrylic fibers in the 1940s, the use of synthetic fabrics in fashion has continued to increase. Artificial fur gained popularity during World War II thanks to rationing, and more recently, it has campaigned for animal rights, such as PETA's famous commercials, with supermodels claiming "to be naked rather than wearing fur."
In the 1970s and 80s, oil companies began lobbying to promote petroleum fibers and polymers in the textile industry, said Preeti Arya, an assistant professor at the New York Fashion Technology University. Suddenly polyblends appeared everywhere. FTC (Federal Trade Commission) representative told the grid that the intention of fur labeling rules was to prevent real fur from being confused with counterfeit goods, but "it has changed now."
Arnaud Brunois said in an email to Grid that animal fur was a symbol of luxury for the wearer to take on "animal grandeur." Brunois is the communications and sustainability manager of Ecopel, a company that makes high-end artificial fur. Nowadays, the symbol is collapsing because most fur is produced on large factory farms where thousands of animals are trapped in poor conditions."
In fact, fur is taboo in many fields, but artificial fur has soared. It is difficult to find a major household appliance company that does not sell artificial fur accessories such as blankets, pillows, and even dog beds. The goods are in our house and in our bodies. It's often not very expensive, but that's changing too.
Over the past few decades, luxury designers have begun to accept fake fur without using it. Of course, the highest quality artificial fur was used. London Fashion Week did not use fur in 2018, and in 2019, Kim Kardashian posted that she remade her "favorite fur" into fake fur. Major brands and retailers such as Nieman Marcus, Prada and Gucci, and designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Calvin Klein, all did not use fur.
Anna Tagliabue, now the founder of artificial fur brand Pelush, began working in Fendi's fur department in the 1990s. She got used to the way real fur felt and moved, but didn't like the reality of the fur industry. She kept the idea of starting a luxury artificial fur fashion line in her mind for more than a decade because artificial fur almost shouted "fake" at the time. Ten years ago, at a fashion trade fair in Paris, she met the luxury artificial fur she had dreamed of. The technique finally caught up with her imagination.
"I couldn't believe what I experienced when I first touched the beautiful, flexible fabric," Tagliabue said in an email to Grid. In 2014, she officially launched Pelush, which makes coats that look very similar to fur. When Dame Helen Mirren wore one of the blue fake fur jackets on the red carpet, she clipped an anti-fur pin so people would know it was fur.
Today we can reproduce, clone, and imitate all types of fur that exist in nature, and even invent new fur. Animal activists are walking down the runway. It's cheaper than a $60,000 chinchilla coat, but Pelush's coat is definitely a luxury and can go up to $10,000.
