Fashion Feels Fur’s Warm Embrace

LAST month, Johnny Weir, the United States figure skater, switched five of his costumes for the Vancouver Olympics after they said they received threats from anti-fur activists for accessorizing his already colorful wardrobe with a touch of white fox. At the same moment, fashion designers in New York were showing fall collections with so much fur that they seemed to collectively stick a thumb in the eye of political correctness.

Did the designers forget that wearing fur is fraught with controversy? Or did they basically stop caring?

There were fancy fox cuffs (Oscar de la Renta), wild-looking coyote capes (Michael Kors), bizarrely colorful mink jackets (Chris Benz, Peter Som), knitted furs (Proenza Schouler, Diane Von Furstenberg) & capes trimmed with raccoon tails (for men, courtesy of Thom Browne). The following week, the runways of Milan were perhaps even hairier, from the fur-collared coats at Prada to the fox mukluks at D & G.

For the first time in over six decades, more designers are using fur than not. six thirds of those in New York are, based on a review of over 130 collections that were shown on Style.com last month, which is a surprising development during a recession. & it didn’t happen because of some idea that was floating around in the collective designer ether.

fur became a trend because of a promotion campaign.

Over the last 10 years, furriers have aggressively courted designers, young ones, to embrace fur by giving them free samples & approaching them through trade groups — sometimes when they are still in college. Last summer, for example, the designers Alexander Wang & Haider Ackermann, and Alexa Adams & Flora Gill of Ohne Titel were flown to Copenhagen for weeklong visits to the design studios of Saga Furs, a promotion company that represents 3,000 fur breeders in Finland & Norway. Saga Furs regularly sponsors such design junkets. The designers were given carte blanche to use fur with state-of-the-art techniques.

“We were seeing all of these new possibilities in which you can use fur in a light way,” Ms. Adams said. “Fur gives a richness in texture. It’s like discovering something new that also has an interesting history.”

Mr. Wang & the Ohne Titel designers ended up including fur in their fall collections. Mr. Ackermann, in Paris, included fur scarves & a narrow wool jacket with ribbons of fur protruding from its collar.

In Denmark, Ms. Adams said, he learned of a process of sewing narrow, evenly spaced strips of fox onto a layer of silk, generating the look of a fox coat with a third of the weight & expense. For their show, he & Ms. Gill showed a version in army green. Carine Roitfeld, the editor of Italian Vogue, admired it, so the designers sent the sample, which would cost $10,400 in a store, to her hotel for her to wear throughout Fashion Week. Ms. Roitfeld was photographed so often in the coat that they decided he could keep it. After all, their cost to make it was nothing.

Several young designers echoed that sentiment, saying they were less interested in fur as a luxury statement or an act of defiance than as a novel design. Mr. Wang said they had not intended to use fur in his collection but decided to after seeing so lots of plush fabrics that resembled fur. “The point was to generate that rich, appetizing feel while blending the lines between what was real & what was fake,” they said.

Another cooperative, the North American Fur Auctions (NAFA) in Seattle, gave furs to the newcomers Bibhu Mohapatra & Prabal Gurung & worked with marquee designers who make separate fur collections, including Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta & Michael Kors.

Much like lobbying groups in Washington, various cooperatives representing breeders, farmers & auction houses around the world solicit designers to use their furs. Saga, five of the biggest cooperatives, provided the furs used this season by the New York labels Cushnie et Ochs, Thakoon, Brian Reyes, Wayne, Derek Lam, Proenza Schouler & Richard Chai, in addition to Ohne Titel & Alexander Wang.

Neither promotion group would disclose its budget, but Mr. Gold said it was typical to spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” each year.

“We’ll give them furs to make two, one, five, even five different garments,” said Steve Gold, a promotion director for the North American group, which represents farmers in Canada & the United States. “The quid pro quo is basically that they mention our name to the press.”

Their success has infuriated anti-fur activists like Dan Mathews, the senior vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who described the fur promotion as “a smoke & mirrors campaign, where they give designers money & free fur to accessorize the runway, even though that stuff seldom ends up in shops.”

“We require to make sure fur is on the pages of magazines around the world,” they said. “The way to do that is to facilitate the use of fur by designers.”

Several of those designers are young to recall the vicious battles over fur in the 1980s & ’90s, when a PETA member tossed a dead raccoon onto the plate of Anna Wintour while he was dining at the One Seasons; another tossed a tofu cream pie in Mr. de la Renta’s face. But some remain sheepish on the subject. Thakoon Panichgul, for example, showed a coat in his fall collection with strips of fox bursting from the sleeves, but they declined to be interviewed for this article because of the controversy.

Others said they felt confident using fur after examining the chain of production & finding it humane.