Real Fur versus Faux Fur Sustainability Dilemma

Fur coats... regardless of whether it is real or not, it is a known fact that every fashion icon has at least one of these in their wardrobe. I mean, It is cosy, it is a timeless trend and it is stylish enough to make you the star of any occasion! 

However, the main question of this post is about whether this trend is sustainable or not. When people wear real fur or animal leather, do people promote sustainable fashion by promoting the motto "buy once, wear forever" or do they just torture and kill animals for the sake of their wardrobes? Should they be switching it to faux fur? How about faux fur's chemical production that causes long term environmental damages? Shall we just give up on this trend? 

Real fur is a heritage from grandmas to grandchildren. It lasts nearly forever, only gets dry cleaned once in a year and it is VERY VERY expensive. It is mostly from high brands or local boutiques from posh areas that is considered equal to a jewelry store. However, grandma season was kind of over during 90's with supermodels such as Naomi Campbell declared that they would "rather go naked" than wearing a fur.  2000s were full of boycotts of PETA supporters on the runways such as this:

Eventually, the rise of animal rights led luxury fashion brands to give up on fur and turn into faux fur. In fact, even Versace, once was considered as synonym with fur for animal rights activists, has given up on fur. But does this also means that luxury fashion has given up on sustainability to protect animals? Shouldn't animal rights be a part of the sustainable fashion since sustainability is about ethics? Wasn't sustainability also meant buying clothes with higher quality to wear longer in order to prevent overconsumption? 

Let us see the claims of real fur supporters. They stand by the idea that long-lastingness of real fur and that it lacks of degrading chemicals and colors like faux fur does. They claim that its production only consists of water, salt and alum when the product is not colored or needs a bleach. They believe that the impact is incomparable to faux fur production which uses nylon and polyester most of the time in addition to bleaching and chemicializing the products in order to make them look like a fur. 

How about living conditions  of innocent animals and the greenhouse gas emissions caused by feed supplies? Are treaties on  making animal farming as ethical as possible for furry friends a tool of compensating the massacre being done? (Also considering the fact that they are mostly stuck in cages) Perhaps, these questions can also be considered to understand how "sustainable" real fur is.

When it comes to faux fur, we can never say that it is 100% environment friendly since the usage of nylon, coloring and other chemical products are necessary to create those perfect shopping mall coats that you can find in nearly any color or print you want. However, it is nice to hear that animals to do not get killed or tortured(unless we count the fact that these chemicals ruining their ecosystems and in long term harming their and our health all together).  

Recently a considerable project was announced by Ecopel, a faux fur developer, to create bio- based designs collaborated with Stella McCartney. Nothing is certain yet, but the existence of having an idea for creating sinless faux furs is fascinating!

Still blaming faux fur more since it has long term health effects? Well, I would like to share a study made on six fur samples from the market (Mostly from Canada Goose) that approves the chemical damages caused by real fur is as dangerous as the faux fur. Here is the link: 

https://www.furfreealliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ToxicFur_Bremer-Umweltinstitut.pdf

To conclude, we can see that regardless of it is real or fake, fur clothing cannot be more unethical. Therefore, the decision depends on the consumer: Do you want to support animal torture and chemical gas emissions to wear something forever, or, do you want to just damage the environment once in a while by changing the clothing whenever it gets old?

I would like to give a personal solution to this dilemma. I know that fur is a timeless trend and I am a big fan too. I have at least three faux fur jackets in my wardrobe, and until now, I thought that I was doing no harm to anything by buying all those colorful cosy things since they weren't made of real animals. But I am not going to throw them away just because of these facts! I am just simply going to continue wearing them, try to take care of them more and boycott any type of fur production by not buying any more faux furs and continue not wearing real fur. If I am really dying to buy a faux fur coat, I can always visit a vintage store to buy one since the damage has been done by its former owner and it is always better than buying it from a store and support its production more.

Fair enough? I hope so. Until the bio based faux furs arrive, I think this plan might work.