Seal fur hits the runway in Montreal
- Seal jumpsuit from Bente Houmann Andersen (Image: Seal)
Beaver, rabbit and mink pelts may have been a fixture of Toronto fashion week, but the Canadian fur industry has come one step closer to putting seal skin on the backs of the city’s sartorialists. The news from this week’s North American Fur and Fashion Exposition trade show in Montreal is that the soaring price of mink (it’s up 30 to 50 per cent, thanks to cold weather and the easing recession) means that customers and designers will be choosing less expensive furs, like beaver, fox and, yes, seal, which are 60 per cent cheaper than mink. While seal fur (shown in Montreal by designer Bente Houmann Andersen) is prohibited in the U.S., China has become a growing market. Time will tell whether we see Stephen Harper wearing a seal coat (he did eat blubber) to shill the stuff.
• Mink Price Hikes May Force Shoppers Into Beaver, Fox, or Mink Combo Pieces [New York]
• China gives Canada its approval of seal [Toronto Star]
Beaver, rabbit and mink pelts may have been a fixture of Toronto fashion week, but the Canadian fur industry has come one step closer to putting seal skin on the backs of the city's sartorialists. The news from this week's North American Fur and Fashion Exposition trade show in Montreal is that the soaring price of mink (it's up 30 to 50 per cent, thanks to cold weather and the easing recession) means that customers and designers will be choosing less expensive furs, like beaver, fox and, yes, seal, which are 60 per cent cheaper than mink. While seal fur (shown in Montreal by designer Bente Houmann Andersen) is prohibited in the U.S., China has become a growing market. Time will tell whether we see Stephen Harper wearing a seal coat (he did eat blubber) to shill the stuff.
• Mink Price Hikes May Force Shoppers Into Beaver, Fox, or Mink Combo Pieces [New York]
• China gives Canada its approval of seal [Toronto Star]){kind=link}
Good god, that’s terrible! I really wish people would stop encouraging the brutal butchering of seals. Purchasing seal skin to make a fashion statement is a step in the wrong direction. Let’s grow some common sense Canada.
1. Stephen Harper and his cabinet likely didn’t eat seal anymore than he ate the communion host at Romeo Leblanc’s requiem mass. As for the seal fete, he brings his own photographer when he travels to remote places; ergo, we saw him and his inner circle reach for the seal but no ingestion.
2. The GG ate seal, more political testosterone than Harper; and,
3. People who abhor the seal hunt must all be vegans or have themselves convinced that the meat they eat has been humanely slaughtered. They would also like to believe that seals, all 6 million off the east coast annually, live on water and do not feed on cods, halibut or lobster.
Let’s embarrass ourselves to the rest of the world even more. Figures it has a market in China and Japan – the epicentres of animal cruelty in the world with their ridiculous chinese medicinal (non)cures from bear gallbladders and the world’s most endangered animals – rhino tusks and tiger bones. . If there was no market for it, it would go away. Shame on you Bente Houmann Andersen for doing this and also for promoting Swakara – unborn lamb pelts – you disgust me, ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.
How about all the other animals we butcher in the name of fashion.We have already F*%&ED up every thing else, why not the seals. Because there cute?
The Canadian seal hunt it the most humane and regulated commercial hunt in the world. I would encourage those who oppose the seal hunt for the reasons fed to them by profiting animal welfare organisations to get them selves educated. Seek your information from independant science journals (who are not funded by Ifaw or Peta) and government regulated websites.
I would also appricieat it if people would become educated on the alternitives to: Faux-Fur and Pleather. They are both non-funtional AND highly pollutant. but don’t take it from me. Go out there and get educated.