• Anti-fur activism began in the 1980s, but it is only now that luxury brands are deserting the world of fur en masse.
• The most recent brands to have given it up are Moncler and Dolce & Gabbana, but the list is very long: from Gucci, to Prada, to Giorgio Armani, who has also given up angora wool.
• Some brands within the Lvmh group still use it, but are working to find viable bio-based alternatives

The most recent luxury maison to have abandoned fur is Moncler, which will still have it in its autumn-winter 2023 collection, but from this year will stop purchasing it and consequently stop including it in its offer.

The announcement by the brand led by Remo Ruffini came after Dolce & Gabbana's at the start of 2022, and more broadly after 2021, which will be remembered as the year in which luxury maisons decided to desert the world of animal fur en masse.

Those declaring themselves fur-free in 2021 were Valentino, Brunello Cucinelli and no fewer than three brands from the Kering group: Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen. After Los Angeles and San Francisco had individually banned it, in October California voted for a law banning, across the entire state, both the manufacture and the sale of new products containing fur.

What's more, in March of that same year a great many designers from the United Kingdom, including Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood and Erdem, wrote a letter to former prime minister Boris Johnson loudly calling for a ban on the sale of fur across the whole country. #FurFreeBritain was the hashtag with which the British fashion system fought against the use of animal fur.

A fight that has not yet produced an official outcome, but which brought to the government's table the proposal to ban the import of both fur (production has been illegal since 2003) and foie gras. For that matter, the late sovereign Queen Elizabeth had already banned fur from her wardrobe in 2019, while King Charles's environmentalist and green credentials are well known, and the British Fashion Council has championed a fur-free London Fashion Week since 2018.

Giorgio Armani, for his part — one of the fashion world's big names to go fur-free as early as 2016 — has chosen from this season, that is from autumn-winter 2023, to eliminate angora wool as well, obtained from the hair of the angora rabbit. The Asian division of Peta, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights organisation that has had the greatest impact on the fashion world, has in fact been campaigning for years to bring to the general public's attention the cruelty of the method by which this particular type of wool is harvested from rabbits.

Fur, fashion and activism

When you think about it, fur is the most ancestral garment heritage we possess: for our ancestors it was a necessity and for certain nomadic peoples of Siberia and Canada it still is. Warmth and durability are crucial factors not only for clothing, but for a wide range of practical uses: shoes, flasks, saddlebags.

Even today, for peoples such as the Nenets or the Inuit, fur garments are indispensable — they wear them for life and pass them down from generation to generation. It is with the growth and development of Western society that fur became superfluous, because we have many other fabrics with which to protect ourselves from the cold, but also because this type of garment became indicative of a certain status, being expensive and therefore not accessible to everyone and, above all, because it is produced at the cost of the lives of the animals from which the hair is taken.

From the Middle Ages right through to the 1980s, fur was a strong indicator of social status: first because certain types of fur, such as sable and ermine, were reserved exclusively for the monarchy and high-ranking clergy, and later because they became synonymous with the world of luxury.

It was from the 1980s and the first anti-fur demonstrations by Peta that a critical spirit began to take hold among consumers. The 1996 episode of "La ruota della fortuna" became the stuff of legend: a contestant refused the prize, which consisted of a fur coat. Today no programme-maker would ever dream of including something so divisive in the prize pool, but at the time in Italy only the echo of Peta's campaigns was reaching people, and fur was considered an indispensable symbol of prosperity.

Across the Atlantic, however, people had been active for some fifteen years already: the first Peta campaigns date back to the 1980s, in which activists protested outside fashion shows with methods that were sometimes invasive — throwing fake blood at attendees, for example.

The fashion world had in fact begun to seriously question fur around the mid-1990s, when it was models who entered the fray, posing nude for Peta under the slogan "I'd rather go naked than wear fur".

In 1994 Christy Turlington did so, as did Emma Sjoberg, Tatjana Patitz, Heather Stewart Whyte, Fabienne Terwinghe and Naomi Campbell.

This type of action, combined with others carried out by organisations such as Greenpeace, created a strong disaffection with fur: refusing to wear it had become a political act.

At the time, however, among the big names it was only Calvin Klein who publicly announced that he would go fur free, exiting a market worth, as the New York Times reported at the time, more than a billion dollars.

Between the start of the new millennium and 2007 it was then the turn of Ralph Lauren, Betsey Johnson, Tommy Hilfiger, Comme des Garçons, Marc Bouwer, Michael Kors and Vivienne Westwood, while in 2001 Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul McCartney, launched her eponymous line which, from day one, has never used leather, feathers or fur in any of its designs. At the time it was something unusual for the luxury world, which would remain anchored to the use of fur and the most unusual hides for more than another twenty years.

Fur remained a market that many maisons found it difficult to say goodbye to, not least because at the start of the millennium, in a world not yet fully globalised, the battles remained largely local and, while in English-speaking countries opposition to fur was already fairly well established, it was not equally so in other parts of the world.

This, according to Business Insider, led to a revival of the fur market, until concern for the environment and biodiversity began to become a crucial factor in the purchasing decisions of a great many consumers.

Prada, Gucci, Versace, Chanel, Burberry, Canada Goose: the list of luxury houses that have decided to stop using fur is fortunately very long, and you can find it here. Global fur production, however, is anything but slowing down, and China is today the world's largest exporter of fur.

But who in the luxury world still uses fur, and why? A brand such as Fendi, for example, which was founded as a fur house, defends its heritage by declaring that it observes the highest ethical sourcing standards and operates in full compliance with all international, national and regional regulations, supporting traceability as a tool for transparency and innovation.

"Our mission is to ethically provide quality furs for those customers who have freely chosen to wear fur," reads the website. "And we are firmly committed to respecting the opinion and freedom of choice of all." The same applies to Hermès, which has announced its commitment to upholding the fundamental animal welfare principles established by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC). Other houses that still use fur in their products include Dior and Louis Vuitton, both of which, like Fendi, belong to the Lvmh group.

Faux fur or vintage?

Lvmh is one of the major groups in the fashion system that still includes fur in its offering and, at least for the brands most closely associated with it, would appear to have no intention of giving it up any time soon.

It seems, however, that the research and development department is working towards defining new materials for the production of animal-free fur. The main faux fur alternatives available today are made from synthetic fibres; according to statements made to Vogue Business by deputy director for sustainable development Alexandre Capelli, Lvmh is working to create a new sustainable option derived from keratin, the principal protein found in hair.

The debate is indeed far from settled: many of the faux furs currently in circulation are synthetic and therefore impactful — if not on animals, then certainly on the environment. Research is making great strides, however, and in this area luxury brands, which can draw on greater resources, are likely finding the most efficient bio-based solutions.

Biotechnology is now capable of creating realistic plant-based versions of animal products: Hermès has entered into a partnership with Mycoworks, a Californian startup that produces leather from mycelium — the vegetative apparatus of fungi — and last March launched a version of its iconic Victoria Bag in vegan leather, while Stella McCartney is experimenting with an ecological fur made from maize.

Vintage or not vintage? And what about a fur coat that is already on the market, perhaps for several decades? If it is true that nowadays we have no need of a fur coat to protect ourselves from the cold, it is equally true that this type of garment is part of an aesthetic imaginary that may never disappear entirely.

Many people feel uncomfortable wearing fur of any kind, whether synthetic or vintage, but what about those who do not feel that discomfort? What is the more ecological choice? In the case of faux fur, it is important to read the label carefully and understand where the fibre you intend to wear comes from; in the case of a 1970s fur coat, that product already exists in the world, regardless of whether we wear it or not — it is a matter of personal sensibility whether to choose it. Even if it would be better to leave such things in the past where they belong.