Why Real Fur Has Become Mainstream | Fashion

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As you may have read in my recent post I am back and now I will be writing more conversational pieces of content and I thought that my first post should be something I have become increasingly aware of which is how real fur trims have become mainstream and I also wanted to share a few ways to tell the difference between fake and real fur.




I'm sure I'm not the only person to notice the increase in coats/jackets that have "fur" trims or even on hats, it's a very popular trend at the moment.Quite often I find myself standing on a train platform or walking down Oxford Street and notice everyone wearing these jackets and hats but when I started to look a little closer I realised that at least half of these "fur" trims are actual real fur and it just kind of goes unnoticed. I think there are a few reasons but I'm going to start quite frankly and honestly and put a lot of blame on Canada Goose. They have almost singlehandedly pioneered in bringing the puffer jacket with a fur trim back to the forefront of people's minds, personally I am all for a faux fur trim on a coat but these guys use coyote fur on the duck down padded jackets and I'm not sure if you are aware a lot of the time the animals are alive when they have their fur removed, I'm not going to go any further into that side of things because there is a plethora of information on the web if you really wanted to dig into it further. Canada Goose is a brand that at least doesn't hide the fact they use real fur, they know it's controversial but they do offer jackets without fur and, in some respects, at least I can acknowledge this brand chooses to use fur and I can choose not to buy from them.

In recent months however there was the Boohoo real fur scandal where this fashion brand was selling items labelled as "faux fur" when in reality it was real fur which was likely to have come from a rabbit. Boohoo aren't the only brand to make this error though, BBC's Watchdog did an investigation which actually highlighted brands like Amazon, TK Maxx and items sold through Ebay where also selling real fur (dog and raccoon) as faux fur. I mean, if retailers can't even get this correct, how are consumers supposed to know the difference? Even when looking into London markets, a lot of these cute pom pom hats are made from real fur and sold at such a cheap price it's easy to assume that they couldn't be real fur.  So on the one hand you have brands confidently selling fur and being honest but on the other you have brands who "genuinely" don't realise they are selling real fur, it really isn't surprising that fur is so mainstream now.

I think people should be made aware of how to tell the difference between real fur and fake fur but there are some really simple ways to identify real vs fake and surprisingly cost is not one of the factors, real fur comes incredibly cheap so don't be lulled into thinking "it's too cheap to be real". I often can tell real fur apart from fake because of the movement of it being worn on the person or the way the breeze catches the fur and makes the strands move in different ways, you just don't get the same movement with fake fur, that said I do have a keen eye for details so many may not be able to tell the difference between the two. The most effective and quick way to check whether the fur is real or not is to separate the fur so you can see the base, if it's fake you will see like a webbing type of material, if it is real it will be attached to skin and look like a smooth surface. It's also said that real fur strands tend to taper to a point at the end whereas fake fur has a more blunt cut. 

I am for personal choice and understand some people and cultures are happy to wear real fur, almost like leather but I wonder how many of the people actually realise that the items they are wearing are real fur?  I suspect it's less than you think.