British Vogue: “Fashion Finally Needs to Disown Fur”

British Vogue recently published a feature about the imminent downfall of the global fur industry in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the piece—titled “Millions Of Mink Being Slaughtered In Denmark Proves Why Fashion Finally Needs Disown Fur”—writer Rosalind Jana highlights a series of recent events that have crippled the fur industry, from a growing number of fashion brands banning fur (including Prada, Burberry, Gucci, Chanel, Versace, Armani, and DKNY) to British fashion shows removing it from catwalks to the Queen of England choosing to no longer wear the cruelty begotten material. “No longer the marker of luxury it was, fur is now often seen as a retrograde product mired in unjustifiable ethical issues,” Jana wrote.

Most prominently, Jana focuses on the mass scale disruption to fur farms in European countries brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This summer, COVID-19 infections were identified on mink farms in Spain, the United States, and the Netherlands—the latter of which will close all of its remaining mink fur farms by March 2021, two-and-a-half years sooner than a mink fur farming ban already on the books in the country. In Denmark, a massive cull of the country’s 15 million to 17 million mink is currently underway after a mutated form of COVID-19—which showed decreased sensitivity to antibodies, posing a threat to the effectiveness of future COVID-19 vaccines—was found in both humans and mink. “As the pandemic continues to put strain on an already ailing industry, perhaps it also provides a useful moment to pause and once more question the validity of fur’s presence in the fashion industry at all,” Jana wrote. “This could be the time to say goodbye to it—for good.”