After tearfully emerging from my hovel, having sat through the infamous ‘vegan-turner’ documentary, Earth- lings, and swearing off meat forever, I was forced to take a second look at some of our lifestyle choices. I have never agreed with wearing fur. One of my earlier memories is condemning the mink fur family heirloom to a life of solitude in the depths of the attic. It doesn’t take a raging vegan hippy with hairy armpits to be against fur either. Many people with their heads screwed firmly on their shoulders will argue that as we don’t kill these animals to eat them, they should not be killed for our own vanity, particularly when there are some pretty convincing faux options out there.
With the ghost of a still-living flayed fox still burning my retinas, I brought this topic up with some of my (admittedly rather upper middle class) contemporaries. They surprisingly sang its praises, taking the opinion that “if I shot it myself, I can wear it myself”. I found it accompanied their Barbours in quite a satisfying manner. Alright, fur is very warm and yes, people who live in the arctic rely on it to stay alive in the winter, but while the UK is unreasonably cold at times, we don’t need a fur to see us through the cold, unheated nights in student accommodation.
For those who still live innocent, carefree, pre-Earthlings lives, let me gently fill you in a little about the fur industry. After living their days in tiny confined cages, going crazy and circling day after day, the animals are killed as cheaply and efficiently as possible (or in some cases, just skinned alive). The cheapest way to kill animals is, to put it politely, an electric shock administered up the rear. If, even after that, you need another con for your anti-fur list, you smell like a wet dog if you get caught in the rain.
I’m not here to preach to you. You can find out more for yourselves pretty easily. But after lecturing myself hoarse to some pro-fur friends, they looked pointedly at my zip-up Vagabonds with raised eyebrows: Is leather any better? We tell ourselves that it is acceptable because cows die for food any- way, so really we’re just making sure that nothing goes to waste. I would like to point out now that if you happily tucked into a steak last time your parents came to visit, you might not necessarily feel guilty about your fabulous new boots, and fair enough, because that would be a little hypocritical. But actually if you move past the animal rights to the tanning process, which uses extremely toxic chemicals, its not such a faultless system either.
Still, how about setting aside our weeping consciences and buying fur vintage? These animals have been dead for ages and you’re not supporting the industry because those heartless men with the electric probes have probably retired and are sitting warming their leather booted feet on a sheepskin rug. This is a question yours truly has not quite resolved yet. Plus me and my Vagabonds are a romance akin to Elizabeth and Darcy or Christian and Anastasia (maybe not quite, although that brings a number of other misuses of leather into question), and I’m not sure I’m ready to buy vegan footwear. Unless it is Stella McCartney.
