Why we’re no longer faking it

Everybody remembers when Cindy, Christy, Naomi et al took their clothes off to make the point that animals should be able to keep theirs on, but 20 years later real fur is back on the catwalks, and back on Naomi again. Noelle McCarthy reports

CAROLINE BERNARDO, furrier, is showing me her wares. I am standing in front of a full length mirror in the showroom of Bernardo’s of Dublin, the oldest fur shop in Ireland, transfixed by the image of myself decked out in mink. I am wearing a neat little sheared fur jacket in an electric shade of blue. The design is a cropped box cut, very neat, very chic, very Parisian. It’s an utterly classic style, or would be, if it was rendered in wool, say, or tweed. As it is, the colour and the plushness of the fur have turned it into something else entirely. I look like Cookie Monster, if Cookie Monster wore Chanel. Hairy, explosive, well-tailored, bright blue. And entirely on-point fashionwise.

Fur is having a moment, as style-watchers know. Not that it ever really went away. Fur became anathema, briefly, about a decade or so ago, thanks to a high profile anti-fur campaign by animal rights group PETA, the zenith of which saw the highest paid models in the world stripping off to declare, “We’d rather go naked than wear fur”. Everybody remembers when Cindy, Christy, Naomi et al took their clothes off to make the point that animals should be able to keep theirs on, but 20 years later real fur is back on the catwalks, and back on Naomi again.