How to Ethically Wear Fur This Winter: A Sliding Scale of Guilt-Free Options

Faux fur coat from A.W.A.K.E. Photo: Courtesy

It’s hard not to feel a little shopper’s lust for the furry confections—ranging from elegant to silly-chic—that dotted the fall runways, especially as the weather chills. But there’s no getting around the animals the fur came from.

Torn, and looking for a way to justify wearing pelts, your fingers might just type “ethical fur” into your good friend Google. What comes up is nothing short of confusing. Here’s what to make of it all, a veritable sliding scale of fur ethics.

If you really want to wear fur guilt-free, start with vintage; it’s already dead. (Keep in mind that this isn’t a good enough excuse for PETA, even though they donate vintage fur—marked with red paint—to homeless people to keep them warm.)

Next up in ok-ish-to-wear fur is roadkill. Truly. Pamela Paquin, the Massachusetts based owner of Petite Mort Fur, works with local law enforcement to source her “accidental fur.” She’s not keen on the term roadkill; “It is laced and laden with disgust and judgment. These animals have endured serious trauma and death because of us and deserve decency and honor.” Paquin grew up on a dairy farm, taught herself how to harvest pelts, and disdains waste. “Who doesn’t cringe when you drive by a dead animal? But very often that animal is useable,” she explains. Whenever she can (as in, when the deceased aren’t “well past due”), she skins roadside, and then offers the bodies of coyotes, raccoons, deer, and foxes back to the woods for natural predators. She believes her accessories—stoles, hats, muffs, capelets and more, all sold with the stories of where they came from—will help her reach her lofty goal of replacing all fur farming.

Paquin is not alone “paying tribute” to what would otherwise be wasted fur.
Roadkill Creations makes hair accessories, purses (the marketing copy for one reads, “Hard to believe this foxy red haired beauty was once street pizza”), and even beverage “coozies” out of “environmentally friendly fur” in Florida. Its website touts the luxury of fur without guilt and is full of exclamations like, “Why leave these lovely animals to bloat and rot on the side of the road? I say pick ‘em up, clean 'em up and turn 'em into something beautiful!”

Here’s the thing with honored roadkill and vintage fur alike: no one can tell if it’s old or accidental (unless you, like PETA, want to splash it with red paint). Which means whenever you step outside, there’s a public relations issue. Constantly explaining the origin of your, say, raccoon leg warmers, can get old real fast.

Faux fur coat from Shrimps. Photo: Courtesy

Explaining the lineage of your fur will also be an issue if you buy a new so-called ethical fur. While many designers are pledging to go fur-free, others are offering better sourced fur. It’s nearly impossible to find out what that even means. The designer Charlotte Simone offers both faux fur as well as “ethically sourced and Origin assured” fur, according to her website. A request to find out what origin assured is, exactly, was met with the response that Simone is currently designing with 70 percent faux fur and will be 100 percent faux in 2016.

This move is understandable. Faux wins as the unimpeachable way to design with or wear fur, worry-free. And there are some fantastic faux creations on the market, thanks in part to modern manufacturing. “I was very fortunate to be introduced to a company producing an amazing quality of faux fur,” says Shrimps designer Hannah Weiland, who uses faux for a number of reasons including her “personal taste and views” as well as price, color, and creative flexibility. “This is the highest quality of faux fur available and it is genuinely difficult to distinguish between real fur and this faux fur. Due to extremely recent technological developments in the past five years, the faux fur has lost its plastic feel and now has the same feel of warmth as real fur. The faux fur even bristles and moves in the same way as real fur.” This means if you want something new, fuzzy, ethical, and delectable, Shrimps chic faux fur and faux shearling Bobbin coat in a variety of colors (pink and yellow brings to mind Big Bird!) is as good as it gets. It screams cute and pet me all at once. Or pull on Awake’s amusing camel-colored wool coat with red gingham across the chest and oversized brown faux fur sleeves.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking to offload an old fur, why not donate to Born Free USA? They collect them via their Fur for the Animals program to comfort and rehabilitate wild animals.

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