Hooray for Doris Day. Not afraid to take a stance on something she believed in, she told the New York Times in 1971: “Killing an animal to make a coat is a sin. A woman gains status when she refuses to see anything killed to be put on her back. Then she’s truly beautiful.”
She wasn’t the only one to be years ahead of her time in her opposition to wearing fur, for in the decade that preached love and peace, other celebrities, including Mary Tyler Moore and Angie Dickenson also campaigned against the fur trade.
Animal rights were high on the agenda in 1971 as it was also the year that Paul and Linda McCartney went vegetarian, and the seeds of one of the most successful celebrity brands – Linda McCartney Foods – were sown.
While the anti-fur movement continued to gather ground, it is relatively recently that fur has become an absolute no-no in the fashion world.
The likes of Stella McCartney were never going to condone such a practice, but other designers have been surprising slow to make the move away from fur.
Calvin Klein was among the first when he stopped using fur in 1994, based, he said, on “my own reflections on the humane treatment of animals”.
It was 2018 before the British Fashion Council banned animal fur from every fashion show during London Fashion Week, becoming the first major fashion council to ban animal fur entirely.
Our faux fur favourites:
