The oldest item of clothing in my wardrobe is an oyster-coloured fake fur jacket from the 1960s, which I found in a Manchester branch of Oxfam in about 1990. I dimly recollect it costing £6. The first time I wore it, my best friend accused me of “looking like I was going to the opera” — an intended put-down I found thrilling. This Christmas, when I wore the jacket to the pub, my teenage daughter declared it “bouji” and there I was, thrilled again, 35 years later.
The jacket is by Tissavel, a French company founded in 1953 and still in operation today. Its thick pile, which makes it genuinely warm to wear, is 100 per cent acrylic. At the time the material was a revolution in textile manufacturing: a luxurious, mass-market and animal-friendly alternative to real fur. Seventy years on and we now know how much harm plastic-based polymers like acrylic in clothing do to the environment. Petroleum-derived synthetics are energy intensive to manufacture and can take hundreds of years to biodegrade. One of the reasons my jacket still looks good a quarter of a century after I bought it is acrylic’s obstinate durability.
Fake fur has been trending this winter. Hit the city centres right now and you’ll clock women in their twenties and thirties in fluffy, cropped, hip-length and mid-length, long-haired fake furs — the diva look favoured by Hollywood celebrities including Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez and Jennifer Lopez. Kim Kardashian has been seen in a variety of fuzzy furs. (In December her underwear label Skims went so far as to launch a furry bikini set.)
And while there are certainly enough plastic-based fake furs already on the planet for us not to need any more (you can find plenty of vintage Tissavel on Ebay, Etsy and other secondary retail sites, usually priced between £50 and £200), inroads are now being made in producing artificial fur in materials not derived from plastics. This is probably wise given new legislative frameworks, including the European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which as of July requires fashion brands to comply with stricter manufacturing standards to ensure transparency regarding product footprint and the reduction of environmental and social impact.
At the moment, efforts to be more ethical and environmentally considered seem to be sporadic, if not confused and confusing, with brands from luxury to high street offering a mix across ranges of real fur or shearling, alongside polymer-based fake furs and more planet-friendly options. Burberry’s moss green faux fur coat (£4,990, burberry.com), seen on the autumn/winter 2024 runway, is made from a viscose and cotton blend — natural yarns that will biodegrade faster than plastic — but animal lovers may be deterred by its leather trim.
There are other efforts in the right direction. At COP28 in 2023, Stella McCartney debuted plush coats made from Savian, a material derived from agricultural waste and plant fibres including nettle, hemp and flax, which manufacturer BioFluff claims to be “the world’s first plant-based fur”. Other brands took note. “Since COP28 we’ve been seeing a lot of interest and excitement from designers and brands across the spectrum, from luxury to fast fashion, independent to conglomerates,” says Roni GamZon, BioFluff’s co-founder and chief commercial officer. “We know it takes time for brands to commit to new materials at a commercial scale, but with incoming legislation and growing consumer demand for lower impact, plastic-free fur alternatives, confidence and support from the industry is growing.”
The wool industry is also coming up with luxury alternatives to fur. In 2020, Loro Piana introduced CashFur, a cashmere woven into the consistency of shearling. Now a staple of its winter collections, it features in casual, fleece-like jackets and accessories. Alaïa’s well-received summer/fall 24 collection included sculptural coats that looked like traditional long fibre fur but were made from merino wool yarn.
John Roberts, managing director of Woolmark, the non-profit association representing Australia’s woolgrowers, says that in the last two years swatch requests for merino faux fur from The Wool Lab (the organisation’s innovation division) have increased “tenfold”. Brands using Woolmark’s “wool fur” beyond Alaïa include Max Mara, Lagos Space Programme, Matty Bovan and Angel Chen. New York designer Gabriela Hearst adds silk and cashmere to the wool for her luxury belted wrap coats, seen on the AW24 runway (£5,500, gabrielahearst.com).
Plastic-free faux is not just happening at the luxury level. One of the most charming faux fur makers I’ve come across recently is the tiny British brand Goatherdess. As well as made-to-order clothing, the brand makes soft and fluffy natural wool “fur” jackets and capelets (from £225, goatherdess.co.uk) from the fleeces of its free-roaming Angora goat herd.
Polly Reid, a former scientist for Shell who retrained at the London College of Fashion, began keeping rare-breed goats and sheep in 2012 to trim the grass in the meadows of the Aberdeenshire hillside farm where she lives with her husband. “I just fell in love with the animals and grew the herd. Then I decided I needed to do something to showcase these rare breeds,” she says. “I discovered in my research that at the beginning of the 20th century their wool was used for natural wool fur coats, along with alpaca, but that stopped in the 1950s when the mass production of synthetic fabrics began. So I decided to bring that back.”
Launched in 2019, the jackets are made either from mohair or a mix of wool and mohair. The herd produces enough wool for around 200 jackets each year. “The goat fleece grows over an inch each month and they have two haircuts a year,” Reid says. “They’re cut very gently with a special comb rather than shears and stand on a platform at my eye level. We leave about an inch so they don’t get cold.” The wool is then graded — the finest used for the jackets — and sent to a mill 30 miles away where it is washed, spun and turned into the yarn.
Lined in silk, the jackets, which come in natural white, black and antique rose, take two to three weeks to make and are a popular category within Reid’s collection. “They’re bought by people who are wanting to be more sustainable,” Reid says. “They like the concept of faux fur but don’t like the synthetic fabrications.” It’s a growing club.
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