As we wrote last month, fur was huge on the runways of New York Fashion Week, but apparently the trend is more significant than we realized. The New York Times is reporting that 2010 marks the first year that a majority of the designers presenting collections used fur.

The question of “why?” is complex to answer. Programs like Origin Assured have resonated with consumers, reassuring them that their fur was humanely farmed.

And on the design side, a lot has changed. Some holdouts have always used fur (like Oscar de la Renta), but some PETA converts of the ’90s have since changed their minds (like Ralph Lauren) and young designers are increasingly accepting of the product (like Irina Shabayeva of Project Runway fame, whose F/W 2010 coat is pictured here).

The NYT reports:

Several of those designers are too young to remember the vicious battles over fur in the 1980s and ’90s, when a PETA member tossed a dead raccoon onto the plate of Anna Wintour while she was dining at the Four Seasons; another tossed a tofu cream pie in Mr. de la Renta’s face. But some remain sheepish on the subject. Thakoon Panichgul, for example, showed a coat in his fall collection with strips of fox bursting from the sleeves, but he declined to be interviewed for this article because of the controversy.

Others said they felt confident using fur after examining the chain of production and finding it humane.

“You see so much leather and shearling being used this season, and no one is complaining about that,” [designer Alexa] Adams said. “I don’t see the difference between using shearling and using fur.”

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