A faux-fur winter ahead?

The rains in Joburg are bringing with them a chill that has caused me to drag my biggest and cosiest of blankets out from the back of the closet, where all my winter stuff is.

Stepping outside makes me want to wear a coat or perhaps drag out a faux fur, which appear to be blanketing the world of fashion if street style shots from fashion month and online stores are anything to go by.

It’s all over Instagram feeds and as far back as last year November, online fashion outlets have been selling the trend largely driven by Gen Z and millennials with their affinity for vintage fashion.

Per Women’s Wear Daily: “The furry, fuzzy and fluffy fashion trend has manifested in several additional forms this winter. Wrapping shoes, skirts and bags, faux-fur clothes and accessories are the snuggly winter items fashion people can’t get enough of. Something else some people can’t get enough of is real fur, which some are buying from vintage markets and resellers.

Wearing real fur has been a bit of a taboo in fashion for a long time due to activism from the likes of Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Back in the 1980s, fur was not just trendy, it was a status symbol that everyone in fashion, especially, wanted to wear.

Peta played an outsize role in a cultural shift that saw animal furs falling almost completely out of favour. CNN reported that: “Calvin Klein was one of the earliest major fashion brands to go fur-free after Peta stormed its New York offices in 1994. That same year, the group ran its famous ads featuring naked supermodels, claiming they’d rather go naked than wear fur.”

It was a three-decades long campaign that debuted in 1990, “and featured rock band The Go Go’s posing nude behind a red banner. Since then, the organisation has featured Pamela Anderson, Wendy Williams, Eva Mendes, Pink and a slew of other celebrities posing in the buff for its anti-fur campaigns”, wrote Women’s Wear Daily.

Accordingly, 1990s supermodels Tyra Banks, Christie Turlington and many others have also featured, and while the campaign ended in 2020, the culture shift has continued and Peta has shifted focus to other animal-derived materials such as wool and leather, declaring the fur fight a victory.

Since 2022 brands like Moncler and Dolce & Gabbana joined others like Gucci in their fur ban. Gucci’s parent company Kering went fully fur-free in 2021, joining brands including Chanel and Versace, who had also gone fur-free.

Still, some brands have kept on producing animal furs because of what some say is the “enduring appeal” of the material, even though the sale of animal furs is banned in major markets such as California and a few other American states.

The trade is also banned in Britain, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. (According to Google: The Animal Protection Act of 1962 prohibits cruelty to animals, but there are no enforcement mechanisms for fur farming.”)

This “enduring appeal” of animal fur is perhaps why the faux furs appearing on runways today look as real as ever. Reporting from Copenhagen Fashion Week recently, Vogue Scandanavia said the faux-furs appearing on the runway were “eerily” so. They further reported: “At a time when the debate surrounding vintage furs — namely, whether we should be allowed to wear them — has been reignited, the trend towards natural-looking faux fur is notable.

After all, to wear a passable fake without repercussion implies that we’re moving further towards a space in which vintage or upcycled real fur is socially acceptable. Upcycled fur also popped up on the Copenhagen runways, appearing in the Alectra Rothschild/Masculina show.” 

The snuggly, maximalist outerwear trend is being offered up by high street brands and fast fashion outlets alike, and they come brooch-embellished, as you might see at Zara; floor-length, as you will find on ASOS, which brought up a total of 392 styles at the time of writing. They come in leopard print, as hoodies, cropped and in black, green, burgundy and every colour in-between.

As we move into an era where consumers are driving demand for sustainability and ethical fashion, faux-furs will definitely gain favour, as will vintage furs. In fact, some argue that wearing vintage furs instead of faux-furs is more sustainable considering you’re wearing something that already exists rather than creating demand for something new.

This also supports a circular economy where furs, and other materials, can be reused or repurposed instead of being discarded. 

With the current wet and cold weather in Joburg, I certainly wouldn’t discard the opportunity to put a fur, faux or vintage, on my back.