Posted November 26, 200618 yr Real fur: Dressed to kill Revealed: UK fur imports at record levels, 'IoS' investigation shows Top designers and celebrities defy the anti-cruelty lobby By Jonathan Owen and Marie Woolf Published: 26 November 2006 Record numbers of Britons are buying real fur, overturning decades of campaigning by activists who say substitutes should be worn instead. Sales of fur clothing have hit £500m for the first time, up 30 per cent on two years ago, with £40m of new fur products being imported every year. To the fury of the anti-cruelty lobby, the championing of real fur by supermodels and top designers is sending sales soaring, with, say protesters, young animals being clubbed and shot by hunters as a result. The fashion designer Stella McCartney last night told The Independent on Sunday: "The continuing use of fur is a real problem in the fashion industry, and there is an issue with people assuming that fur trim is fake when most of it is real." More than a decade after top models posed in placards with "I'd rather go naked than wear fur", new figures show that sales of fur have risen by 30 per cent in the past two years. Figures compiled for the IoS by HM Customs and Revenue show that almost one million tons of fur are being imported each year - and that the global market for fur has hit almost £7bn. Fendi, the luxury retailer, has led the move to "rebrand" fur, selling products using dyed and shaved fur to make it look more appealing. Other top stores have followed suit, with designers such as Julien Macdonald, Jean-Paul Gaultier, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen staging shows with models in real fur. The British Fur Traders Association said that sales of fur have risen by a third in two years, while Hockley, a London furrier, is reporting a 45 per cent rise in business. Concern over the comeback of fur in the UK is so great that the RSPCA is preparing to mount a major new anti-fur campaign early next year. The World Society for the Protection of Animals blamed the fashion industry for fuelling the rise, saying catwalk shows were making fur seem acceptable to the public. "Fur-bearing animals are forced to endure life in cruel cages and are... slammed against concrete floors and skinned alive," said a spokesman for the charity. Such is the scale of alarm at the rise in fur use that the Government is moving to ban all imports of harp and hooded seal products into the UK. This has been prompted by a sharp increase in the past year in the amount of seal skins imported into Britain. Official Customs figures show that the amount of seal pelt imports rose from 3.6 tons in 2004 to 4.1 tons last year. In 2004, the UK imported almost a third of the value of all Canadian seal skins into the EU. Protests continue over the Canadian seal hunt, where hundreds of thousands of animals are clubbed or shot each year. Campaigners claim that some seals are still alive when they are skinned. The fur trade: Bloody fashion We are buying more fur than ever. Seal skin is now so popular that the Government is to ban imports. The suffering this trade causes to animals is as great as ever. So why can't we do without it? Jonathan Owen reports Published: 26 November 2006 When five of the world's biggest supermodels posed with an "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" placard in 1994, it was the high point of the anti-fur campaign. Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer and Elle Macpherson had achieved celebrity status, and their influence had others queuing up to join the anti-fur protests. The act of wearing fur became a social crime and those deemed guilty risked being abused by strangers in the street. How things have changed. Naomi, Cindy, Elle and Claudia have returned to promoting fur, with just Christy remaining true to her word. Fashion is notoriously fickle and the famous slogan "It takes 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat... but only one to wear it" is being disregarded by many designers and models. Britain's fur industry, almost driven out of existence in the 1990s, is back - and thriving. It has been quietly restyling fur to appeal to a new generation of customers. An investigation by The Independent on Sunday has revealed that more than a thousand tons of fur worth £41m came into Britain last year. The British Fur Trade Association claims that retail sales of fur have risen by a third in two years. In London, one furrier, Hockley, is reporting a 45 per cent increase in business. Global sales of fur reached a record £6.6bn in 2005, according to the International Fur Trade Federation. Concern over the comeback is so great that the RSPCA is to mount a major new anti-fur campaign early next year aimed atfashion-conscious 15- to 30-year-olds. An RSPCA spokesman said, "There are concerns that people may be starting to buy fur in ignorance. Although full mink coats may be still ethically out of bounds, the fur industry is going for trim and trinkets. Most consumers often don't know what they are buying, and would be horrified if they realised the suffering involved." Stella McCartney, in an interview with this newspaper, said, "There's nothing fashionable about a dead animal that has been cruelly killed just because some people think it looks cool to wear. The continuing use of fur is still a real problem in the fashion industry and there is an issue with people out there assuming that fur trim is fake when most of it is real." More than 50 million animals will be killed for their fur this year, most of which will have spent their short lives in miserable conditions on fur farms before they are killed, sometimes being skinned while still alive. The World Society for the Protection of Animals has joined the calls for action. Major General Peter Davies, the charity's director general, is calling for a boycott of fur, blaming the fashion industry for fuelling a rise in sales "by flaunting it all over the catwalk". Yet the "fur fatwa" of the past is no more. High profile designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Prada, and Roberto Cavalli regularly celebrate fur in their catwalk shows and defy the attentions of animal rights activists. A generation has grown up without being exposed to the mass-media shock advertising campaigns that helped launch the anti-fur movement in the Eighties. Campaigners are concerned that people need to be constantly reminded of the cruelty involved in fur. But issues like climate change and global poverty have taken centre stage. "I think there has been a fall-off in consciousness and fur has crept back insidiously," said the style commentator Peter York. "Fur trim is just a texture; it is not a pelt or mass of pelts, and simply does not look like fur." Mink and fox are being joined by an array of other animals. One of the most notorious is karakul lambskin, worn by stars such as Keira Knightley, which is made from the pelt of new-born lambs that are killed days after birth or even taken from the womb. Growing numbers of seal skins are also being imported and the Government is so concerned that it is to back a ban on the import of all sealskin products. This comes just a week after the European Union announced a ban on dog and cat fur from China, one of the world's biggest fur exporters. Undercover animal investigator Peter Joseph (his details have been changed) has visited several mink and fox fur farms in Norway in recent months. He describes what he found at one mink farm. "People think of these places as farms, but they are really more like animal warehouses, where the animals are there for one reason only - to be killed for their coats. "In one dimly-lit cage in a corner of the shed was a large mink. I couldn't help wondering how people who buy fur would react if they could have seen what I did. This particular animal could barely move. It seemed to have resigned itself to its fate and just lay there - its eyes swollen from the ammonia fumes from its urine and faeces and an open wound on its head." A spokeswoman from the International Fur Trade Federation claims that the popularity of fur is increasing due to people making up their own minds about the issue and "reappraising natural, sustainable materials with modern techniques". But Mr Joseph is trying to forget his experience of a fur farm. "If I close my eyes I can still see them there. Walking away from the farm was one of the hardest things I have ever done." Additional reporting by Marie Woolf and Sonia Elks Nicole Richie and the rabbit fur jacket WHERE AND WHEN: Book signing in New York, 2005 WEARING: Grey rabbit fur jacket COST: Estimated £1,000 CRUELTY FACTOR: Rabbits are farmed in terrible conditions. A large proportion are bred and killed purely for the fur and the RSPCA says that people should not assume that rabbit fur is automatically a by-product of meat. In the wild, rabbits are roaming social animals that live in burrows. In a cage on a fur farm they are denied this freedom and are usually killed by having their necks broken. The use of rabbit fur in costume is first recorded in 13th-century literature. Dita Von Teese wears mink WHERE AND WHEN: Rodeo Drive Walk of Style Awards, Beverly Hills, March 2006 WEARING: Mink cloak COST: Anything up to £8,000 CRUELTY FACTOR: About 85 per cent of all mink are farmed, something that is incredibly stressful for these wild animals. They live for just six or seven months before being killed; common methods include gassing, electrocution or beating them to death. They are perhaps best known for their dark brown fur, which turns white at the chin and runs to black at the tips of their tails. It takes 60 to 80 minks to make a fur coat. Young tend to be born in May. They are dead by December. Kate Moss's seal boots WHERE AND WHEN: Leaving a London restaurant in March 2004 WEARING: Mukluk boots COST: About £200 CRUELTY FACTOR: Mukluks are a soft boot made of reindeer skin or sealskin and worn by Inuit. The sealskin is taken from seals that are clubbed to death at two weeks old. Sophie Dahl chooses mink and white fox WHERE AND WHEN: Fragrance Foundation Awards, New York, April 2005 WEARING: White mink coat, fox fur collar COST: Estimated £7,000 CRUELTY FACTOR: Millions of mink and fox endure terrible conditions in fur farms, where they live their short lives in cages so small that they can barely turn around. White foxes that are caught from the wild in steel-jaw traps are in so much pain that some bite off their limbs in order to escape. Many die horrible deaths before the trapper arrives to kill them. Those on farms are gassed or killed by electrocution: electrodes are clamped in the mouth and the rectum. Keira Knightley opts for karakul lambskin WHERE AND WHEN: British Independent Film Awards in London, 2005 WEARING: Black karakul lambskin coat COST: Between £3,000 and £6,000 CRUELTY FACTOR: One of the cruellest forms of fur, according to animal welfarists. Undercover investigations have documented how heavily pregnant ewes are killed and their unborn lambs removed for their coats. Newborn lambs are routinely killed after a few days, before their velvet-smooth coats have had a chance to uncurl. The fur is also called Persian lamb, astrakhan and broadtail. It is also used to make high-end hats, carpets and rugs. should these celebs and the products (perfumes, films tv shows, records, books etc) be boycotted?
November 27, 200618 yr The thread a few weeks ago about how few Britons left actually wear fur... it surprised me because if you read the fashion mags, fur is really coming back. I've been shopping for a jacket lately and they ALL have fake fur linings. How does everyone feel about that? I sort of take issue because of what it represents, but then again, if everyone with a real fur exchanged it for synthetic...
November 27, 200618 yr Celebs who wear fur make me puke... By doing so, they are creating the market for it... I've said it before and I'll say it again - the ONLY people who have an excuse to wear fur are people living in places like Alaska, the North Pole or Siberia, areas which have extreme cold weather conditions.... I think we need to go back to the days of chucking fake blood at people wearing fur....
November 27, 200618 yr pink said not long ago that she hates beyonce for wearing fur and hopes whatever animal shes wearing bites her ass :lol:
November 27, 200618 yr i hope this vile trade gets stopped and i hope there an outcry and people who wear real fur get shamed.. we saw them off in the 70's/80's, it would be a shame if it was to return...
November 27, 200618 yr I would happily torture anyone that wears real fur Would you bite anyone who eats meat?
November 27, 200618 yr Would you bite anyone who eats meat? theres a difference though between eating meat , which is a food scource, and wearing fur...killing animals just to use ITS pelt for vanities sake.
November 27, 200618 yr Honestly, I think the fashion industry is $h!t. It contributes nothing to society and it´s useless. I hate all models and designers, and all this fashion world is nothing but c**p. It only exist to create a fake concept of beauty where a woman needs to be damn skinny (ugly in my opinion), and these ridiculous clothes that nobody would ever wear in the streets, and also promoting fur clothes... The world would be a better place without this fashion futility. Who ever said that Naomi Campbell or any of these other skinny women are actually beautiful? To me they´re ugly more then an average women of their age. Who builds this concept of beauty are usually designer who don´t even like women (since 99% of them are gay). I don´t have anything against gay people, but why do the stereotype of woman beauty has to be built by people who actually don´t even feel atracted by women? To me they just want a few bones to wear their clown clothes, because if the woman is actually beautiful nobody would actually pay attention to the piece of $h!t she is wearing. Fashion sucks.
November 27, 200618 yr Honestly, I think the fashion industry is $h!t. It contributes nothing to society and it´s useless. I hate all models and designers, and all this fashion world is nothing but c**p. It only exist to create a fake concept of beauty where a woman needs to be damn skinny (ugly in my opinion), and these ridiculous clothes that nobody would ever wear in the streets, and also promoting fur clothes... The world would be a better place without this fashion futility. Who ever said that Naomi Campbell or any of these other skinny women are actually beautiful? To me they´re ugly more then an average women of their age. Who builds this concept of beauty are usually designer who don´t even like women (since 99% of them are gay). I don´t have anything against gay people, but why do the stereotype of woman beauty has to be built by people who actually don´t even feel atracted by women? To me they just want a few bones to wear their clown clothes, because if the woman is actually beautiful nobody would actually pay attention to the piece of $h!t she is wearing. Fashion sucks. lol.. i pretty much agree with most of what you said.
November 28, 200618 yr My friends think that wearing fur is ok. Then they need to be shown the error of their ways..... -_-
November 28, 200618 yr Then they need to be shown the error of their ways..... -_- They don't listen to me. One of them wants something made from deer skin. I dont think they care very much for animals, they're the type whose parents shoot/skin/eat deers and stuff.
November 28, 200618 yr Can't you just like, show them those myspace videos that circulate around or anything? :o
November 28, 200618 yr Can't you just like, show them those myspace videos that circulate around or anything? :o They won't watch them. :rolleyes:
November 28, 200618 yr They won't watch them. :rolleyes: Make them =l. I well don't see why you hang out with them tbh -_-. Plums in their mouths bruv.
November 28, 200618 yr Make them =l. I well don't see why you hang out with them tbh -_-. Plums in their mouths bruv. People don't like reality, if they dont watch the videos they'll keep thinking it's ok. But they don't listen, too set in their ways. Nor do I tbh. One of them hasn't been there for a while, it's actually peaceful.
November 28, 200618 yr Fortunately if they love fur so much they are clearly so lacking in intelligence that they will never be able to afford fur as at best they will work in minimum wage jobs if they ever work at all
November 28, 200618 yr Oh no, their parents are rich. eek bang goes my theory then :( If any friend of mine supported such animal cruelty I very much doubt I would stay friends with them
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