From the archive, 17 January 1979: More women turn to fake fur

Aug 21, 2023

If diamonds have always been a girl's best friend, her mink used to come a close second as comforter and hedge against inflation. But that was before the conservationists made the wearing of real furs a thing of guilt and peril.

But merely lobbying the women of the world with the negative slogan: "Don't wear animal skins. Why should something have to die so you can look beautiful and affluent?" didn't achieve spectacular results. The women of the world had to be offered something just as glamorous, just as warm and practical as an alternative. So Beauty Without Cruelty was born.

The trouble was that back in 1959 when the "educational charitable trust" headed by Lady Muriel Dowding was established, fake furs had a worse than poor relationship to the real thing. There was something vaguely dishonest about the way they valiantly strove to imitate their betters and the way their wearers prayed no one would know the difference. Most people could see the difference at a glance. The texture was wrong, the colouring was too uniform and, in a good light, there was an instantly recognisable nylon-ness about them.

Beauty Without Cruelty's campaign to make fake furs not only socially acceptable but socially virtuous has made a major contribution to inspiring the fruitful development programmes in which the manufacturers of fake fur fabrics have invested so much. As Daphne Charters of Beauty Without Cruelty says, " Every season brings advances in the quality of the fabrics. Some imitations are better than others - the manufacturers have had great trouble with fox, for instance, though it's getting better."

As fur fabrics have improved and have become, to the lay eye at least, indistinguishable from the real thing, they have attracted imaginative designers unskilled in the arts of the furrier. Some of the most covetable coats around are the ones that combine fabrics like heavy corduroy or tweed with fur fabric linings, insets and panels.

A fake fur is lighter - you don't buckle at the knees as you chase the number 23 bus to the traffic lights - and its cotton backing is more pliable than the most perfectly cured hide. And a fake fur is cheaper, much cheaper. A Beauty Without Cruelty mink can be had for just under £160 - the price of a good, wind-defying cloth coat. Attractively designed three-quarter and bomber jackets come for as little as £130. Maintenance is cheaper, too. Fur fabric should be treated with as much respect as the real thing; after an outing in the rain it should be patted dry, then brushed gently to fluff up then smooth down the pile. It doesn't need to spend the summer in cold storage and, though some people prefer to have their fakes cleaned by fur specialists, others pop them into the coin-op dry cleaners and report first-class results.