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.”

We know you have opinions. Share them in the comments section below.

As promised yesterday, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at the New York Fashion Week coverage and came to an obvious conclusion: Fur is big again for Fall/Winter 2010.

Michael Kors in particular used a ton of fur in his new collection (pictured here), for both men and women.

And a protégé from Kors’s own Project Runway, Season 6 winner Irina Shabayeva’s debut collection made fox fur the centerpiece of several designs. “From her opening look, a camel cashmere pheasant-print coat with crystal fox collar, the tone was set,” reports the Fur Industry Council of America in Women’s Wear Daily.

With so much fur conspicuously used by the most buzzworthy designers, it begs the question: Has PETA’s influence dimmed over the years due to its increasingly outrageous stunts? Is the era of fur-shunning over for good?

“After 10 seasons covering New York Fashion Week, I’ve learned that no matter how often People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals protest outside the tents at Bryant Park, every year designers will still incorporate fur into their collections. This week, Marc Jacobs, Thakoon, Carolina Herrera, and a handful of other designers used fur in abundance. It was like a barnyard with goat, mink, fox, beaver, raccoon, and even muskrat seen on the catwalk.”

– Boston Globe columnist Christopher Muther’s observations of New York Fashion Week, which concludes tomorrow. More commentary regarding fur on the runway to come tomorrow.

Pictured above: from Marc Jacobs’s F/W 2010 show on February 15.

American figure skater Johnny Weir has reported that he won’t back down to demands that he lose his costume trimmed with fox fur for his Olympics routine, even though he’s been the subject of death threats in recent weeks.

In his trademark flamboyant style, Weir invited extremists to bring it on:

“All these crazy fur people definitely changed my mind. Security wise, staying in a hotel would be very difficult,” Weir told reporters after turning up for an 0800 news conference sporting a striking red and white silk scarf looped around his neck and with his nails manicured. “There have been threats against me. Threats of harming me personally and I didn’t want to get hurt. So I decided to stay in the village and my team has made it as comfortable as possible. …

“There was a lot of attention put on a tiny piece of fur,” said the 25-year-old, the 2008 world bronze medallist. “While I do understand anti-fur activists views about fur and the fur industry, they aren’t part of my life.

“One thing that is horrible is when somebody pushes a belief on you like a religion. I was definitely threatened and felt very threatened. People are nuts.

“I’m an easy person to pick on because I’m very open I like fur and I like things that come from dead animals. It’s easy put your cause against an athlete going to the Olympic Games, it’s good free publicity for these activists.

“I’m not a huge politician that gets these threats all the time. I mean I’m a figure skater. It’s not normal to receive a threat that really threatens your life. It’s a very scary thing.”

Mr. Weir’s opinions may be considered outlandish to some, but we have to agree with him that threatening violence — especially given the Olympics’ history of lethal security breaches — is not the right way to confront him on this issue.

And this is actually the second fur controversy regarding the Vancouver Olympics. Read up on the first one here.

Hey guys — looking to keep warm this winter? You might have to dig deep to avoid looking as fashionable as “a microwavable kebab.” Hilarious men’s fashion writer Alexis Petridis bemoans the state of faux fur for men in the U.K. Guardian:

Once, they were the height of louche sophistication, the kind of thing the Rolling Stones wore while looking elegantly wasted. Perhaps the rock star’s penchant for fur coats hastened their fall from grace: by the late 70s, they had become associated with a rock aristocracy so irritating that people felt impelled to form Sham 69 and spit at each other in protest. The moral argument has an impact, too. You want fake fur to look like the real thing, but too much and you risk Chrissie Hynde chaining herself to you whenever you step outside.

So, there aren’t many about: I ended up with a too-small women’s one, which made me look as louche and sophisticated as a microwavable kebab.

Mr. Petridis can take heart that plenty of vintage fur exists on eBay from the very era he’s trying to channel. No word yet whether Mick Jagger is ready to part with his old coats, though.

An Oregon man who set himself on fire in protest of a Portland fur boutique has died, police are saying.

Witnesses described the scene as pretty gruesome:

[A witness] said that after setting himself ablaze, the man tried to enter Nicholas Ungar Furs  at 1137 S.W. Yamhill St. He said the man also had something in his hands, but could not see what it was.

Cheema said a police officer was at the stoplight at Southwest 12th Street and Yamhill Street when the incident occurred and immediately responded.

By the time firefighters arrived, two police officers and bystanders had already put out the flames, Simmons said.

A short time later, charred materials remained on the ground around the building, including a shoe, but most were unidentifiable. Yellow police tape surrounded the scene.

The fur store has been the site of frequent animal-rights protests in the past and Cheema said the man was yelling something about the world ending and animals dying.

“People always come every day protesting,” Cheema said. “They’ve done some extreme things.”

Our condolences to his family, but this kind of violent protest has got to stop. No matter what you believe about the ethics of fur or other animal products, destroying a human life does not further the cause.

The European Union has enacted a ban on Canadian seal fur, reigniting the controversy over the ethics of seal hunting. On the one side, the seal hunt is a tradition practiced by Canada’s native population, who rely on the sales of the pelts to support their communities. But it’s also been roundly and publicly condemned by PETA and the Humane Society of the United States.

China’s fur market is booming and has no such restrictions on Canadian pelts. To find out whether Chinese consumers are interesting in buying imported seal pelts, Canada’s The Globe and Mail recently surveyed savvy fur-buying shoppers in Shanghai.

A few sample responses, first from a pro-fur perspective:

Every time I wear my real fur jacket, people ask if it’s real. A lot of people I hang out with are foreigners, and so I’ll tell them it’s fake because I don’t want to offend them. But if a Chinese person asks me, I would definitely tell them it’s real. In our culture, it’s not a big deal – we think wearing fur is really nice.

I don’t especially care what kind of animal the clothing is made of – for me, it depends on the style, design and price.

And from the other side:

I have three fur coats and one fur scarf, all made of rabbit. They’re beautiful and trendy. I doubt I will buy [seal fur], I think it might be too expensive. Hunting animals for clothing is a concern for me. I think seals should be protected.

There’s a column in the Huffington Post today that’s making me think really, really hard.  It raises some interesting questions (which I suspect was the whole point).

It boils down to this: Should we consider fur an ethical choice in its own right if the alternative is here-today-and-polluting-tomorrow, throwaway polyester?

In an article entitled Fur Real: An Ethical Question for Vegan Fashion, author Faran Krentcil recalls being confronted about her vintage fur coat (passed down for 4 generations) by a good friend wearing a vegan, but entirely fast-fashion outfit.

From Krentcil’s HuffPo piece:

But what if vintage fur is an ethical fashion choice? It’s durable, biodegradable, and already produced. Is it stronger than Stella McCartney’s sustainable fabric, or Loomstate’s organic jeans? No, those examples are beyond reproach (and incredibly chic, with price tags to match). But is a vintage fur more ethically sound than a fast fashion ensemble? That’s a discussion I’d like to have. [...]

But even if no bunnies were harmed in the making of an outfit, we might want to quietly ask if any children, rivers, or patches of ozone were pummeled in the quest for a $7 shirt. Is that simplifying things? Of course. Should we feel guilty every time we buy a Rodarte for Target dress? Absolutely not (I’ve got two; I adore them). Like a couture collection, the ethics of fashion aren’t just black and white; they’re textured and staggering in their angles and detail, and in need of respect and examination. There’s no quick fix – or absolute measurement – to fashion’s impact on the environment. There’s also no need to judge my 60-year-old fur coat as a murder weapon, any more than I’d judge your pleather boots as a toxic bomb.

I think she’s hit on something really important by pointing out that the ethics of fashion “aren’t just black and white,” especially concerning something as complex and age-old as fur.  Food for thought.

image from Ecorazzi

As the Copenhagen climate talks draw to a close, it’s worth noting how much our culture has come to value the merits of green – both because people truly care about the Earth, and because caring about the Earth has grown so chic. But the actual rules of green living are surprisingly hard to navigate, not least of all when it comes to choosing clothes.

Do you want to save the animals or the planet at large? Do you focus on your outfit’s origins, or its afterlife? Do you submit to the harsh realities of the food chain? Or do you fret about the death of cows and bunnies while the planet weeps over your petroleum-based pleather?

– Boston Globe columnist Joanna Weiss in her latest op-ed, “The plight of the green fashionista.”

Antonia Zerbisias, a columnist for the Toronto Star, remembers one Christmas 30 years ago when she received a fur coat from her husband — “a beautiful dark ranch mink, with a detachable hood,” she writes.

This was before the era of PETA, and she says at the time it was a responsible choice:

For Montrealers, fur was de rigueur, a necessary bulwark against the killing cold.

What’s more, in my hometown, the fur industry, which built Canada – for better or worse, depending whether you were a beaver, an aboriginal or the Hudson’s Bay Company – and employed thousands. There was even “the fur district,” with lofty old factory buildings filled with giant sewing machines. In the streets below, men would scurry with racks loaded with skins or finished coats.

That area is dead now and, like Creed’s in Toronto, most of the companies are gone.

But still, according to the Fur Institute of Canada, the industry contributes $800 million to our GDP and employs 60,000 trappers (including 25,000 aboriginals), with another 5,000 in farming, manufacturing and sales.

These days she’s nervous to wear the coat for fear of being splattered with red paint by renegade activists, but she’s held on to it for all these years, revealing that she’s “spent thousands to clean it, insure it and store it.”

To us, it’s a shame not to wear something that’s been in your possession for so long. Do you have anything in your closet that you’re afraid to wear, whether for similar concerns of public backlash or other fears of ruining or losing it?