Nothing keeps you warm during a long cold winter like a good fur. Especially when it’s wrapped around your head.
I notice a lot less real furs on the streets here in the UK than in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. This partly has to do with the colder climate and tradition (Denmark is the world’s biggest mink producing country + our strong connection to Greenland has made seal fur very popular).
But I suspect it’s also political, as people in the UK are a lot more anti-fur than in Denmark. (Fur farming has been banned in the UK since 2004, and this is probably a bad example, but just read what the always obnoxious Liz Jones has to say about the subject.)
This is not going to be a long defence speech about why I choose to wear real fur, as most people know the arguments pro & con, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with me but just respect that this is my personal choice, just as I choose to wear leather and eat meat.
And I do get some of the anti-fur arguments, but what I don’t get is the aggressive behaviour a lot of anti-fur protesters display. Throwing red paint at people, standing in front of Selfridges screaming and “setting free” thousands of mink resulting in them dying a slow, cruel death in nature etc. just doesn’t seem neither constructive nor very intelligent to me. It just makes them look stupid and spiteful.
To me fur is not a fashion statement, nor about showing off or enjoying the blood-dripping torture of innocent animals. I just love the way it feels, the texture and the way it protects me from the cold.
My take on it is that I’ve chosen to only wear vintage & second-hand fur and would never wear fur from endangered species. If I were to ever buy a new fur I would make sure the animals have been responsible reared and humanely killed and I would prefer to wear a fur from an animal that hasn’t JUST been killed for its fur.
Enough said, back to the hats I wanted to show you:
Over the years I’ve accumulated three very different fur hats. Let’s start with my least favourite. This I believe is a red fox and it cost me next to nothing (DKK20/£2) in my favourite Red Cross shop in Copenhagen.
The second one is black (or very dark brown) and from the same Red Cross shop. I paid around DKK 80/£9 for it. I’m not really sure what animal this is from. Fox again?
And here’s my favourite. I believe this one is fox as well. I bought this from a lovely woman on as sunny summer day at a flee market at Østerfælled Torv, close to where I used to live.
The woman’s mother had just moved to a smaller flat, so she was selling all the things the old lady didn’t use anymore. I paid DKK250/£28 for it.
Mette Bassett 