Category: Fashion

Oslo Fashion Week bans fur from catwalk

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:


OSLO--Oslo Fashion Week founder Pål Vasbotten on January 8,  2011 confirmed to ANIMAL PEOPLE that the only Norwegian fashion event of global note has banned fur from the catwalks. Oslo Fashion Week, held twice a year since 2004,  will next be celebrated from February 15 through February 21,  2011.

Unconfirmed reports quoting Vasbotten with a variety of different attributions circulated for more than two weeks before the Oslo Fashion Week web site first mentioned the ban by including a third-hand account by Katherine Sweet of the fashion publication Radar. Sweet reported that Vasbotten told The Huffington Post that banning fur from the catwalk “has been a very natural choice for us because we do not want [Oslo Fashion Week] to appear as an arena in which to promote products based on the treatment of animals [as] prohibited by animal welfare concerns in several countries.” Read more

Fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Fur sales skidded––again––this past winter. “This
was the single worst season since the 1930s,” said Robert
Meltzer of Evans Inc. Sales at the 12 Evans stores fell by $6.2
million during the third quarter of 1994. At the Danish Fur Sales
auction of December 15, an industry barometer, the average
mink pelt price fell from $29.91 in 1993––the highest in
years––to $20.15. Yet clearance dropped to 78%. At the retail
level, the average advertised price of a basic mink coat in the
New York City area plunged to $2,282 by Valentine’s Day, close
to last winter’s all-time low in inflation-adjusted dollars of $2,174.
Cruelty charges filed in August 1994 against chin-
chilla breeder Jose LaCalle of Freestone, California, were
dropped on February 10 when LaCalle agreed to cease killing
chinchillas by genital electrocution––at least within California
––and announced he’d moved his firm, Bella Chinchilla
International, “to an undisclosed country south of the U.S. bor-
der.” Filed by the Sonoma County Humane Society based on
evidence obtained by PETA, the case was reportedly PETA’s
fifth attempt to win a precedent-setting cruelty conviction against
a chinchilla breeder, based on the American Veterinary Medical
Association’s determination that genital electrocution is inhu-
mane. So far, none of the cases have gone to trial. Chinchilla
ranching has been a bit more profitable lately than mink and fox
ranching. The average pelt price fell from $31.08 in 1990 to
$26.61 in 1994, but profits rose because the price drop increased
demand. Fur-trimmed cloth and leather garments are the only
growth sector of the industry and furriers find that chinchilla trim
brings a higher markup than mink, fox, or most trapped furs.

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Fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

While the fur trade for the third year in
a row touts a comeback, facts and figures again
tell a different story. “For the first time in 50
years,” the Ritz Thrift Shop advertised in October,
“the Ritz is offering new designer furs,” apparently
clearing unsold stock from other furriers.
A burst of auction fever last winter
boosted the average mink pelt price from $20.49 in
Toronto on December 14 to $29.91 at Copenhagen
the next day, sparking even faster bidding at sever-
al other auctions, but by the season-ending auction
in Finland the average had fallen back to $20.50.
Even then, a third of the pelts offered didn’t sell,
perhaps because furriers had already bought half
again more pelts than they’ve sold in garments dur-
ing any of the past five winters, at an overall aver-
age of $30.13. To break even, retailers will have to
sell more fur this winter than they have since 1989-
1990, for 35% more money than they got last win-
ter: an average mink coat price of $3,200. In
October, the average was closer to $2,500.

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Fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Canadian environment minister Sheila Copps,
whose gracelessness earned her the nickname “Leader of
the rat pack” during her years as a Parliamentary back-
bencher, disrupted a meeting of top environmental offi-
cials from the seven major Western industrialized nations
on March 12 by denouncing the European Community ban
on seal pelt imports, the pending EC ban on imports of
pelts trapped by cruel methods, and opposition to the cur-
rent Canadian seal hunt. Copps claimed an alleged popula-
tion explosion of seals is causing the collapse of the
Atlantic Canada fishing industry, despite strong biological
evidence that seals do not eat many fish of the most com-
mercially valued species.

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Klein quits fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Designer Calvin Klein announced
February 11 that his firm had not renewed a
labeling agreement with Alixandre Furs of
New York City, which expired at the end of
January, and would no longer be involved in
the fur trade. Klein followed the examples of
other top designers including Georgio
Armani, Bill Blass, and Carolyn Herrera.
He said a PETA protest at his office on
January 25 had nothing to do with his deci-
sion, which was reached in November 1993,
“Unfortunately,” he stated, “PETA was not
aware of our previous decision,” although it
was widely rumored in the garment trade.
PETA nonetheless claimed a victory, seek-
ing to offset the embarrassment suffered in
New York gossip columns after model
Christy Turlington proclaimed that she’d
rather wear nothing than fur––just a month
after she appeared in a fur ad in the
November issue of the Paris edition of
Vogue. Memories linger of actress Kathleen
Turner admitting at the PETA inaugural ball
in January 1993 that she wears fur, but not of
endangered species (which would be illegal
to buy in the first place).

FUR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1993:

ARE FUR SALES UP OR DOWN?
U.S. retail fur sales rose to $1.1
billion in 1992, ending a four-year slump
during which sales fell from $1.8 billion to
just $1 billion––says the Fur Information
Council of America.
But the FICA figures, published
in the September 21 Wall Street Journal,
are open to question––not least because it’s
hard to boost sales with markedly fewer
sales outlets. Nearly half the fur retail out-
lets of five years ago are now out of the fur
business. Among them are 34 of the 50 out-
lets formerly owned by Evans Inc., which
controlled 10% of the U.S. retail fur trade;
20 of the 49 Jindo and Fur Vault franchises;
and the entire Furrari and Antonovich
chains, both of which went bankrupt.

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If Imelda Marcos goes cruelty-free, Frank Zigrang might get rich; NON-LEATHER SHOE KING SHOWS HUMANE MERCHANTS HOW

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

DAKOTA CITY, Iowa––”I’ve learned everything the hard way,” Frank
Zigrang states, “and I’m still learning from my mistakes.”
Zigrang founded his mail-order non-leather shoe firm, Heartland Products
in 1986, with no experience in either direct-mail sales or the shoe business. But in
six months as a vegetarian, Zigrang had discovered a vacant market niche, and as a
career businessman, he didn’t waste time moving to fill it. Heartland now boasts a
customer list of 30,000, annual sales of $100,000, and turns a modest profit.
“I’m making a living, anyway,” Zigrang admits. “It maybe isn’t much of
a living by some people’s standards, but I still have other business interests,”
including a share in the family grain farm run by his older brother.
Zigrang has become legendary in the animal protection community
through his frequent sales exhibits at half a dozen regional conferences per year.
But that’s not the key to his success. “I just do that for visibility,” he explains. “To
sell anything, you have to stay visible.” The keys, he emphasizes, “are the old
business stand-bys. That’s price, convenience, and quality. If you can’t sell some-
thing for less than the store at the mall, you sell something better than they have
down at the mall, or something they don’t stock, and you make it more convenient
for your customers to place an order with you than to drive down to the mall. You
stay in touch with your customers. That’s how you get repeat orders. You stock
what they want.”

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Fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1992:

* Fur Free Friday will be November 27
this year—the day after Thanksgiving, the
traditional start of the peak fur sales season.
Friends of Animals and Animal Rights
Mobilization are coordinating events in
numerous locations. Get details from FoA at
212-247-8120, and from ARM at 303-388-
7120.
* The Committee of Jews for
Compassion is taking out a series of full-page
ads in Jewish newspapers to publicize Tel
Aviv chief Sephardic rabbi Haim David
Halevi’s recent ruling that Jewish law forbids
manufacturing or wearing fur because it for-
bids causing pain to animals. Write CJC c/o
CHAI, P.O. Box 3341, Alexandria, VA
22302.

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