Grande mode cet automne: l'Astrakan

[Animal 0]

Pour le prochain bulletin:


US article but I think it is important for Canadian activists to know that
fetal lamb fur is the new "rage"...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/fashion/thursdaystyles/11ASTRA.html

The Lamb on the Runway

By ERIC WILSON
Published: August 11, 2005

TO judge from the pages of late-summer fashion magazines and from the early
arrivals at stores, one of the big trends of the fall season for luxury
shoppers is astrakhan, a recently popularized name for an old-fashioned fur
that in previous generations has been known as Persian lamb, karakul or in
some cases broadtail.


Victor Lopes for The New York Times
Designers don't like to talk about the newborn and unborn lambs used for
astrakhan. A J. Mendel coat.

Forum: Fashion and Style

Firstview
A Dolce & Gabbana astrakhan and alligator boot.
The fashion industry says the texture - sleek and suedelike, subtly ridged
or deeply wrinkled - meets an emerging taste for quiet luxury because it
does not look like fur. Dark, rare and faintly regal, it is the beluga of
outerwear and not incidentally takes its name from a city that is considered
the caviar capital of Russia.

Typical is a coat embroidered with jet black beads at the Prada store on
Fifth Avenue. The price, $24,150, is written on the tag in faint pencil. A
black coat from Giorgio Armani, priced at $13,475, was featured in the
August issues of W and Harper's Bazaar. Saks Fifth Avenue has an off-white
Christian Dior astrakhan bag trimmed with calfskin, expected to be a hit of
the season, in stock for $1,270. More than half of Dolce & Gabbana's fall
collection included astrakhan styled as dresses, coats, skirts, gaiters and
newsboy caps.

"Astrakhan is one of the most important trends in the store for fall," said
Scott Tepper, the fashion director of Henri Bendel, which plans to carry
styles from Adrienne Landau and Pollini by Rifat Ozbek. "It is a natural
progression from all the fox and mink we've been seeing for years."

For some customers, high prices and the fact that it is not a classic beauty
may dampen the appeal of astrakhan, which comes from a sheep called the
karakul, originally bred in central Asia and prized for its glossy, tightly
curled coat at birth. But what the fashion industry is also about to
discover is whether customers will balk once they understand the origins of
this new-old fur, now at its highest visibility in years. Most astrakhan
lambs, according to the fur industry, are killed within days or weeks of
their birth because as they age, the quality of their wool quickly changes
from tightly curled rows to a more coarse and wiry pelt. And some examples,
called broadtail, often considered the most desirable, are the skins of
unborn lambs.

"That's just a little too much," said the designer Carmen Marc Valvo,
explaining why he draws the line at using fetal lambs, although he has
designed a $10,000 riding coat for Saks made of swakara, a trade name for
karakul farmed in Namibia. "I have no problem working with furs," he said,
"but the furs we use are baby lambs that are also raised for food. It's not
like the indiscriminate killing of animals."

Mr. Valvo's recognition of a moral distinction between types of astrakhan is
atypical in the fashion industry. Most designers working with the fur
expressed no compunction about using the skins of unborn lambs or those a
few days old, if indeed they understand the fur's exact origins.

"Most people do not know where the fur comes from unless they are fur
knowledgeable," said Sherry Cassin, a designer of fur accessories sold at
Saks and Bergdorf Goodman. "Very often they do not know what they are
looking at. They just think it's pretty."

Dennis Basso, who has stores in New York and Aspen, Colo., said that more
than half of his latest collection was designed with broadtail, which he
described as the finest of the astrakhan varieties. "You can really handle
it as if it is a fabric," he said. "We have quilted it, we have done
trapunto work on it, and for the past several years we have been beading it.
We've done ball-gown skirts and bustier tops in broadtail."

Mr. Basso, whose broadtail designs cost $7,000 to $45,000, said no client
had ever challenged him about the source of his skins. "Women who want
something beautiful are only interested in the final product," he said.
"She's buying fashion. She's not going into Prada and asking, 'Where did
this come from?' It's like when somebody goes and buys a diamond. They're
not asking what mine it came from either."

Albert Kriemler, the designer of Akris, said he would never use broadtail
from a lamb fetus. The astrakhan in his designs comes from naturally born
lambs raised in China and bought at fur auctions in Moscow and Oslo, which
the fur industry accepts as providing the best and most reputable pelts. The
appeal of high-quality astrakhan is its relative scarcity, Mr. Kriemler
said, noting that although one of his designs was featured in the Bergdorf
catalog, he does not expect to sell more than 25 pieces.

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Firstview
A look from Dolce & Gabbana's fall show.


Forum: Fashion and Style


Firstview
Astrakhan and leather by Burberry.
"As with all luxury items, the more exclusive it is the more desirable it
becomes for the couture designer customer we deal with," he said.

Several designers would not directly answer whether the furs they call
astrakhan come from fetal lambs, but a representative for Dolce & Gabbana
confirmed it uses both types in its fall collection. A spokeswoman for Marc
Jacobs, whose fall collection includes an astrakhan coat trimmed with
ruffles, carried by Barneys New York, said she could not determine whether
it was broadtail. Prada, which has frequently identified its product as
broadtail, did not respond to numerous inquiries. A spokeswoman for Mr.
Armani said the fur described as astrakhan in his fall collection is not
fetal lamb.

Despite the ubiquity of astrakhan in designer collections, the trend has so
far not stirred much opposition from animal-rights groups, which have
conducted vociferous anti-fur campaigns. Dan Mathews, the vice president of
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said that astrakhan made of
newborn and fetal lambs is used more than designers acknowledge, but he said
the issue is not at the top of his organization's agenda. It has focused
attention in recent months on the Australian wool trade practice of
mulesing, removing a strip of skin from the rump of sheep to reduce
susceptibility to fly larvae, and the treatment of animals raised for
Kentucky Fried Chicken, which, Mr. Mathews said, "face a lifetime of
mutilation and misery."

Michael Markarian, the executive vice president of the Humane Society of the
United States, which also opposes the use of fur in fashion, said he was
concerned by the use of furs that do not resemble animal skins, which he
said was a way to appeal to a younger customer who might not know the
origins of the material.

"Many people do not realize when they see this type of product in a retail
location where it came from or that it is even fur," he said. "When we first
started looking into this, it was called karakul or Persian lamb. Astrakhan
is a term we believe started last year, and from what we can tell it is just
an attempt to rebrand."

According to the International Fur Trade Federation, which represents fur
apparel makers, only a small percentage of astrakhan comes from karakul
fetuses, and those are the result of natural miscarriages. The Humane
Society disputes that assertion. It says that labor is induced in the ewes
to force early delivery of their fetuses, or the pregnant ewes are
slaughtered within a week of their expected deliveries.

In 2000 the Humane Society presented videotape from an investigation in
Uzbekistan that showed a fetus being cut from a ewe's carcass. The Fur
Information Council of America, a trade group, called the film staged.
"Farmers would lose their livelihood if they killed off healthy ewes to
abort their fetuses, as was claimed," said Keith Kaplan, the council's
executive director.

Several furriers said broadtail more commonly comes from the fetuses of ewes
that have already given birth to several lambs and that the mature ewes are
killed in the final days of gestation. It is a description that Mr. Kaplan
did not dispute.

That concerns about astrakhan have made little headway this year can be
partly explained because organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals have largely lost sympathy with fashion designers and models like
Cindy Crawford, who embraced the organization's campaigns in the 80's but
grew weary of its intimidating techniques. And designers argue that customer
demand is driving them to continue designing with astrakhan.

Gilles Mendel, the designer of J. Mendel, described astrakhan as "the
perfect fur for the new understated feeling of luxury in fashion right now."
His designs include many types of furs, including broadtail, bought through
an agent at auctions in Russia.

Skip to next paragraph

Forum: Fashion and Style
"In the American luxury market products like that are in high demand," Mr.
Mendel said. "Broadtail is having a real comeback because there is more and
more demand for furs that feel like fabric."

Elaine Sargent, a broker on Wall Street for 45 years, has a wardrobe that
includes a brown broadtail jacket by Ben Kahn bought more than 30 years ago;
a black floor-length style by Jerry Sorbara, who designs furs for Neiman
Marcus; and a broadtail suit by Mary McFadden from about eight years ago.
She said she welcomed the fur's return for fall.

"I always admired Russian broadtail," Ms. Sargent said. "It's very
lightweight, very soft and very feminine." Does she have any problem with
the use of lamb fetuses? "It doesn't bother me at all," she said

With astrakhan's popularity, inexpensive designs with a pattern cut from
velvet or imitations made of viscose are turning up in the marketplace. Ms.
Cassin's astrakhan capes at Saks are not actually astrakhan, but
"astrakhan-type rabbits," which are raised in Spain and treated with the
equivalent of a permanent wave after they are skinned. That is not because
she is ethically opposed to the use of broadtail, she said, but because the
rabbit is "a half or third the price."

Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys, acknowledged that many
people are not aware of where astrakhan comes from. "This is not something
that is usually discussed around fashion tables," Ms. Gilhart said.
"Information is everything, and if people know the origins of what they are
buying, I think they can actually make better decisions as to what to buy,
what not to buy."

"On the other hand," she added, "buying fashion is an emotional act. If
something is perceived as beautiful, sometimes all reasoning goes out the
window."