We’re dropping a crazy collection of vintage fur coats in a week. When we first started sourcing and selling them, I felt guilty (for obvious reasons). Granted, I had never handled real fur coats before so I was ill-informed on why it actually is okay. Frankly, it's actually more than okay. A vintage fur is the environmentally friendly option (and let me tell you, no other coat of mine has kept me so warm and looked so good).
Now let’s talk about the faux fur thing. I get the appeal, it feels like the guilt-free option. But what nobody puts on the tag is that faux fur is plastic. It’s petroleum-based, sheds microplastics every wash, and when it inevitably pills and starts looking sad (because it always does), it sits in a landfill for a few hundred years. The "cruelty-free" coat isn’t actually cruelty-free, the effects just come later.
A vintage fur, on the other hand, already exists. No new animal, no new farm, no new chemicals, no new anything. You're rescuing a beautifully made coat and giving it another few decades of life instead of letting it rot in someone's attic or, worse, a landfill. So yes, buy the vintage fur and feel good about it. The planet agrees with you on this one.
The facts: faux fur is made from petroleum-based synthetics. One study found a single load of polyester laundry can release nearly 500,000 tiny plastic fibers into the water and most washing machines can't catch them, so they end up in rivers and oceans. That plastic basically never breaks down, it just sits in landfills getting smaller and smaller for decades. Meanwhile, research shows that simply wearing a garment nine months longer can cut its carbon, water, and waste footprint by up to 20–30%. A vintage fur is that idea taken to the extreme: zero new production, zero new resources, decades of extra life from a coat that already exists. The most sustainable coat isn't the one with the green tag, it's the one that never had to be made again.
I love you all,
Alex
Source:
https://www.wrap.ngo/media-centre/press-releases/can-north-american-and-eu-clothing-pass-durability-test-wrap-expands
https://thrivingsustainably.com/is-polyester-plastic/
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