10:53am Monday 18th January 2010
By Catherine Cain
When a friend battled her way through the pack ice to stay with us last weekend, she arrived on our doorstep looking just like an Alaskan trapper.
From the toes of her chunky fur-lined boots to the finger tips of her luxurious fox pelt gloves, she appeared to be half woman, half Whipsnade.
Most arresting among the bits of dead animal swathing her body was a pair of inky black mink ear-muffs perched jauntily on the top her head.
Divesting our guest of her furry friends, I asked her if she felt just a teeny bit guilty about wearing them.
“Not really,” came the answer. “Mink and foxes are horrible animals. Anyway these things really keep you warm - and they look great.”
I have to admit that in a sophisticated, old school Hollywood sort of way, our friend did indeed look fantastic wrapped in all that fur. As I carried the items upstairs to the spare bedroom where she was spending the night, I couldn’t resist stroking the luxuriously dense fox fur cuffs of her beautiful gloves.
Okay - I tried on the mink ear muffs too when she wasn’t looking, marvelling at the silky smooth texture of the fur beneath my fingers.
But instead of feeling envious I felt guilty about being momentarily seduced.
It seems, however, that our friend was channelling a strong current trend.
After spending years beyond fashion’s pale, animal fur is out of the closet again and making a big return to the catwalks.
Anna Wintour, the icy, British-born editor of American Vogue, has been working the Cruella de Ville look without a hint of remorse for several seasons now and here in wintry London Kate Moss has been modelling her extensive collection of vintage fur coats and jackets for the paparazzi camped on her doorstep.
For different herds, these women are the very compasses of style. From the grande dames who can afford haute couture, to the teenagers who haunt the racks at Top Shop, clothes made from real animal fur are newly desirable again.
Before Christmas I went with a friend and her 17-year-old daughter to a bric-a-brac fair which featured several stalls selling second-hand clothing. Hanging on the rails among the cute 50s and 60s patterned dresses were various coats, jackets and stoles (complete with pointy snouts and beady glass eyes) made from real fur.
I was interested to see that these items were hotly contested by the excited teenage girls at the event. Taking it in turns, they twirled in front of the mirrors in the kind of coats that even their great-grannies had eventually rejected.
I asked my friend’s teenage daughter what she thought.
With a shrug she replied: “Well, the thing is, they’re vintage so that’s not so bad, is it? I mean, the animal died years ago.”
I was amazed. As far as I’m concerned, putting the word ‘vintage’ in front of the word ‘fur’ doesn’t magically make it an ethically or environmentally sound sartorial choice.
Considering that most under-25s today can reel off chapter and verse about the evils of man-made global warming, complete with detailed footnotes on the horrific fate awaiting the planet’s polar bears if we don’t turn enough lights off, you’d think they’d at least feel slightly uncomfortable about the fur trade’s cruelty to animals, even if it’s 50 years old.
Yet in these confused times it’s apparently a sin to leave a light bulb burning in the kitchen, but perfectly fine to wear a coat made from the skins of 60 dead rabbits if it makes you look fashionable.
Recently Victoria Beckham was photographed wearing a sleek fur jacket. Challenged, she claimed it was a fake, but style pundits reckoned the sheen, cut and weight of the item suggested otherwise. And just last weekend, newspapers carried images of junior scions of the rock aristocracy outside a nightclub where they had gathered to celebrate a birthday. The young women were mostly wearing retro fur coats that looked suspiciously genuine.
It’s sad that media role models are so publicly setting their seal of approval on fur once again because they will be copied by thousands of impressionable young women. Even if people seek out so-called vintage items, seeing this as an acceptable compromise, it will create demand.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a fake fur wrap to wear over my coat collar and I’m now having second thoughts about wearing it - even though it’s purple and 100 per cent Polyester.
Now, I admit to wearing leather shoes and boots and I occasionally eat meat (although for years I‘ve felt vaguely guilty about that - especially if I look at pictures of piglets), so you could, with some justification, accuse me of being a tad hypocritical here.
But think about it for a moment: isn’t there something incredibly arrogant and heartless about the act of stripping an animal of its skin because you think it will look better on you.
Don’t you agree the only creature that looks truly beautiful in a warm fur coat is the animal it grew upon?
*****
Although January is universally recognised as the nadir of the year for the average person’s bank balance, spare a thought for people like me whose nearest and dearest have thoughtlessly decided to celebrate their birthdays before the first post-Christmas pay cheque arrives.
Not only is my bank account currently bleaker than the innermost stretches of the Gobi Desert, but also, when it comes to gifts, all my inspiration was packed away with the baubles and tinsel a couple of weeks ago.
As any female reading this will agree, men are difficult to buy for at the best times so I hope you’ll sympathise with my double dilemma this week.
Not only is it my husband’s birthday on Monday, but next week my dad will, amazingly, be celebrating his 80th.
Somehow, I don’t think a pair of slippers and a giant Toblerone (for both of them) is going to cut it?
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