EDITORIAL: Fur Is Back - Again!

By Simon Ward, Communications Director, FCUSA

Most Americans own something made of cotton, but is cotton "popular"? No, not unless something can be "popular" without a break for thousands of years. Cheesecloth or brushed cotton may go in and out of style, but the basic material is a staple of life, like TVs and cars.

Lost for Words? A surprising term for the normally high-brow Newsweek, but "baaack" seems to sum it up: "A decade after protesters stormed Calvin Klein's office and used red paint to write KILLS ANIMALS under his logo, fur is baaack. Thanks to hip-hop stars like Sean Combs and Foxy Brown, animal pelts have migrated from high society to youth culture, joining jewel-encrusted bike chains and 24-inch 'spinner' rims as essential status symbols for the bling-bling set." Real fur is fun again, Newsweek, Oct. 11, 2004.

So how about fur? And by that we mean the select groups of pelts - mink, fox, chinchilla and the like - society lumps into this category. (Sheepskin and rabbit, for whatever reason, are rarely considered fur.)

Four years ago, the media and fashion pundits declared "Fur is back!" And it was. After years in the doldrums, it was striking out on the catwalks again with a vengeance. It was "popular".

There were also a few spins to choose from, making the story even more attractive. Had society at last rejected the animal rights message, political correctness, or both? Or had fur's slump been caused all along by economic factors or boring designs?

Three years ago, the story was confirmed. "Fur is back!" declared those who had missed the boat a year before.

By two years ago, every paper from New Mexico to New England had cottoned on. Yup, fur was "back"!

Now every one of them has done its confirmation story too, and anyone who still thinks "Fur flies" headlines are fresh, and Naomi Campbell still models for PeTA, never reads this stuff anyway.

All of which begs two questions. How long must something be "back" before it is "here"? And isn't it better to be "here", an accepted if un-newsworthy part of the scene, than "back", with its connotation of transient popularity?

These are riddles the PR arm of the fur industry needs to be considering right about now.

* * *

Clothing is a staple, just like food. As broad categories, they are not subject to changes in popularity. But mink and fox are to cotton what lobster is to bread and potatoes. Consumers have a clear choice about whether to buy our products, and like it or not, the media play a key role in determining that choice.

They can hype the heck out of a product (or vilify it) if there's an interesting story attached. Or they can, and will, drop it like a hot potato when the story has been told or something new and exciting comes along. And because this is fashion we're talking here, something new and exciting is guaranteed to come along.

Well, the story of our renewed love affair with fur has been told ad nauseam. We in the trade will be the last to tire of it, but for media editors and reporters the story is already stale, whether fur stays in fashion or not.

So let's say it has one more year, tops, to run. What should we be hoping for next? And will we have any control?

The best we can hope for, long run, is that mink and fox become as politically uncharged as sheepskin or denim, leather or suede.

Sheepskin, for example, is not the stuff of social commentaries, even though, as any fool knows, it is fur! Journalists don't write about it unless it's for the fashion pages. Animal rights groups pay it little if any attention, knowing consumers would ignore them if they did. And no one cares whether rap singers and supermodels wear it or not. Sheepskin just keeps ticking along. Sometimes it's in fashion, but it's never out, and it's never "back".

And even when such low-profile materials do make the fashion headlines, there's no downside. A few years ago, denim suddenly became the season's hottest material. Then its star fell as quickly as it had risen, but no one declared "Denim is dead!" It may have vanished from the catwalks, but consumers just carried on buying it.

As things stand, this is not the fate awaiting fur. Once the fashion world moves on, for every "Fur is back" story there will be a "Fur is out" story. Of course, writers will only mean to convey that it no longer fills the pages of Vogue. But guaranteed, fur's opponents will milk it for all it's worth, just as we would in their shoes, smugly asserting that after a brief lapse, society has again seen the error of its ways.

As long as we continue to be effective in countering the misinformation of animal rights groups, we will never become total zeroes again. But there is more we can do than simply wait for the "fur is out" stories and then turn on damage control.

By being proactive, we vastly improve our chances of controlling what makes the news and what does not.

The next time designers turn their attention away from mink and fox, fur in many forms will still be gracing models. There will be shearling and beaver, knitted fur and velvet, linings and baubles, every one with a tale to tell. And yes, there will be sheepskin.
These are the stories we need to be preparing the media for now. They need to know that "fur" is a vast family of materials, treatments and styles that has always been with us in one form or another, and always will be.

Mink and fox can then slip quietly into the background until the next time they catch designers' eyes.

We won't be "out" and we won't be "back", we'll just be "here" or hereabouts. It may not be newsworthy, but from a business standpoint we don't need to be in any popularity contest.

For further information contact: Teresa Platt, Executive Director, Fur Commission USA, PMB 506, 826 Orange Avenue, Coronado, CA 92118-2698 USA, (619) 575-0139, (619) 575-5578/fax, furfarmers@aol.com, www.furcommission.com.

To take a cyber-tour of a fur farm, visit Fur Commission USA's Fur on Film at http://www.furcommission.com/video/index.htm

© 1998-2005 Fur Commission USA

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