A Furry Dilemma?

Recently whilst pottering round Facebook, I found Vintage Life Magazine's Girl of The Issue competition, where the winner is chosen by the number of 'likes' their picture receives.  I think this is a nice, democratic way of choosing a winner, and by and large the comments people left were very positive, but I was slightly surprised to see that a lovely picture of a girl wearing a fur stole had received several 'shame about the fur' comments.  Now I'm probably risking losing readers (not great for such a new blog!) and getting paint thrown at me in the street, but my subject for this post is the rights and wrongs of real fur.

The inspiration for this post came to me while I was reading The Sun (not my paper of choice, before you ask!) in the staff room at work and seeing a truly horrible article about the use of raccoon dogs in the manufacture of fake Ugg boots.  The article can be found here, but the accompanying pictures are quite graphic and I would advise those of a more squeamish disposition to avoid it.  Obviously I think that this kind of treatment is barbaric and wrong, but should a case like this make us shy away from all animal products?

The vast majority of people of people I know wear leather shoes, and use other leather products, but are we happier with leather as it is a byproduct of meat?  Real Uggs are, after all, made from sheepskin, and I think that the public tends to be happier with this idea as there are tighter controls in place relating to the treatment of animals in slaughter houses.  I know many people who got rid of any real fur garments they owned during the anti-fur campaigns of the 1980s, but real fur has been creeping back onto the catwalks of London and Milan for a few years now, and the current retro revival has increased its popularity even more. 

My personal view is that I would not buy modern fur as I object to it on ethical grounds, but I am quite happy to wear vintage fur.  Does this make me a hypocrit?  I own a fox fur stole with its head and legs attached, which is belonged to my grandmother and is more than eighty years old.  I wouldn't dream of wearing it in public, but my other vintage coats and stoles make regular appearances, and my silver fox hat, which was purchased by a friend in Russia in 1947, is a mainstay of my winter wardrobe.  I would consider it wasteful to own these items and not wear them, but am I, and others like me, guilty of turning real fur back into an object of desire?

I freely admit that I lie about whether my furs are real or not depending on who is asking, and I've had several delicately worded conversations with strangers about whether or not their beautiful coats are real; some of the faux furs available today are of such good quality that it's often hard to tell that they are fake. 

The majority of vintage shops I have visited have at least one rail dedicated to fur, and the only time I have found this troubling was in a shop that will remain nameless where I found a fur jacket labelled red squirrel.  I hope this label was inaccurate, but if it was genuine I would consider that to be a collector's piece, and not something to be worn in public.  Its a sad fact that there are many coats made from now endangered animals, crocodile handbags and the like still in circulation; as a child I had music lessons on a piano with real ivory keys.  I think the important thing to remember is that destroying these objects will not achieve anything, and hopefully preserving them will stop future generations from making the same mistakes.

I'd be very interested to know what readers think; do you wear fur, old or new?  Is fur something that should be featured in vintage fashion publications, or something that should be left well alone?

Heavy stuff I know, so I will round off this post by returning firmly to my vintage theme and saying that I would NEVER wear Ugg boots, real or fake!