Forget boots — this winter, it’s all about coats with fur.
After years of animal fur being pushed out of fashion, style-savvy Gen Zers are ostracizing faux, flocking to secondhand stores to hunt for vintage furs and boasting their chic finds online.
“Getting my vintage fox fur out for the season, ya’ll can keep the Target one,” snarked one TikTok creator.
Meanwhile, influencer Laura Galebe claimed that Madison Avenue Furs is the “best vintage fur coat store” in the Big Apple, while others show off the garments inherited from their mothers or grandmothers.
“I haven’t seen this many young people coming in, in 25, 30 years,” Larry Cowit, president of Madison Avenue Furs, told The Wall Street Journal. “We have girls coming in who are in college, 20 years old, and they want to buy something in fur.”
The rise of real fur — which comes on the heels of last year’s “mob wife” aesthetic trend — is prompting industry experts to predict its return after decades of anti-fur activism.
“In a year or two, you’ll see it on the runway again,” Daniel Wachtenheim, the vice president of Wachtenheim Furs, told The Journal.
A-listers have already cashed in on the larger fur trend, faux or not — Kelly Rutherford has posed in furry coats for her iconic mirror selfies, while the Jenner sisters and Hailey Bieber have been known to rock the look.
Just this month, actress Anya Taylor-Joy sported a large, cream-colored fur coat while out and about in NYC, and celebs like Jennifer Lopez, Sophia Bush and Ice Spice have donned coats with fur.
Real fur, however, has been the center of controversy for years, with some bars in Manhattan even banning patrons from entering the premises if they were sporting pelts instead of polyester.
Citing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Journal reported that, from 2022 to 2023, mink pelt production plummeted by 28% and its value decreased by 10%. Meanwhile, the state of California banned the sale of new fur products, and luxury labels like Gucci, Balenciaga and Prada vowed to be fur-free.
Online, however, it was a different story, with interest in vintage fur coats soaring on TikTok and Google as the young generation discovered a seemingly ethical workaround: shopping vintage.
“Just like the actors and actresses who got people to drop furs, these influencers are getting them to wear them again,” said Cowit.
Zachary Weiss, a 32-year-old brand consultant, thinks buying new fur is “icky” — but he owns four vintage furs.
“I think on the runway, it’s a virtue-signaling thing that of course we don’t want to consume new fur,” the New Yorker told The Journal. “But off the runway, it’s become a grailed item.”
Texas resident Louisa Harwood told the publication that she wears her fur coat casually for errands or for going to pilates.
“The other day I was playing tennis with girlfriends and it was freezing, and we literally, all three, were wearing our furs,” said Harwood, 40.
But some activists claim the ethics vintage is no different than buying brand new.
“There is a subset of people who are well-intentioned but misguided, who wear vintage fur even though they would never dream of buying new fur,” Ashley Byrne, the director of outreach communications at PETA, told The Journal.
“They should be just as disgusted at any fur ripped off the back of an animal.”
