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Ragtrader magazine recently published a series of articles on the use of fur in Australia's fashion industry. Here, reader Charm Murray likens it to wearing a swastika. What are your thoughts?
I was glad to see that you featured an article about the fur debate that has freshly opened up since the protest in Melbourne at Spring Fashion Week.
However I found it interesting that the article focused on the legality of fur when judging by the uneasiness that designers feel from using vintage fur feel, it is the use of fur in its entirety, that is the focus.
The argument for vintage fur is an interesting one as there is nothing that differentiates it from new and perhaps “illegal” fur yet designers and so-called fashionistas continue to try to justify its use.
All fur production involves the cramped, suffering lives of animals that will meet their untimely deaths after they have been suffocated, electrocuted and even skinned alive and thrown in the rubbish to die.
All fur vintage or new is a non-essential item that is controversial for this very reason. Therefore the continued use and presence of these items condone the wearing of fur and will indiscriminately promote fur resulting in people wanting fur irrespective of whether it is new or old.
If the message you are sending is that fur use is dead and that we as humans have evolved enough to not use it anymore in fashion then it would make sense that no fur should be worn.
Wearing of these items does nothing but indiscriminately increase the demand for fur. The continued presence of any injustice either new or old is promoting the injustice.
If any other horrific and outdated item were to be worn it would cause controversy. Can you imagine the uproar that would result from a person wearing an ivory bracelet?
People would be disgusted that you were to take pleasure from wearing something that is connected to such unnecessary cruelty.
The same can be said if you were to wear a swastika, a symbol of pain, suffering and death all of which was unnecessary. Fur is just like these items. Cruel, outdated and inhumane.
Items that should only be seen in museums to remind us that we have evolved and we have learnt from these acts.
Fur: Vintage, new, illegal or legal. Either it is wrong or it is right, it should be worn or it should not.
Read the original story from Ragtrader's fur series here: