Fashion Has Finally Made Its Peace With Faux Fur
Texture and colour take centre stage as fashion rewrites fur’s narrative.
For the longest time, fur was the most controversial fabric in fashion. In the 1970s, protests from animal rights activists, pushing the luxury industry toward synthetic alternatives, mostly polyester. But it was a double-edged sword. Many houses refused to budge from their stance on using real fur, and those that acquiesced into exploring faux fur saw their products as not being seen as luxury enough. After all, a mink overcoat or a tasteful parka was the epitome of wealth signifiers that you could wear on the daily.
Amidst all this debate, the idea of using fur itself turned into somewhat of a taboo, and although the new money sensibilities of the 90s and 2000s era hip-hop helped bring it back, fur always seemed to come with an asterisk on its head.
The story has changed since then. As the world becomes more conscious about the environment, faux fur is increasingly accepted in couture. Case in point: even years after the Mob Wife aesthetic moved on to a better place, designers are experimenting with faux fur as the glamorous head turner it once was.
This shift has spilled into menswear too. We talked last year about how fur accents were all the rage in menswear, peaking out of suits and on the collars of denim jackets. This fashion season, parkas continue to dominate, and the fashion's returning love for fur has escalated into the fabric showing up everywhere; starting, of course, with the oversized coats.
Fall/Winter 2026 was especially plentiful in that regard. Of course, you have the classics: Willy Chavarria and Dsquared2 made an argument for the classic heavy silhouette with their faux leopard fur piece and the overcoat, respectively.
This fur revival is not just about bringing back the clothes that we have grown up associating with fur. The fabric is no longer boxed into trophy coats and retro fantasy. Designers are looking for ways to present fur anew, both to the eyes and to touch. It is dyed in unlikely shades, shaved down to unexpected finishes, and wrapped into new meaning.
KidSuper, for example, opened their show with a fur overcoat in what seemed like an otherwise mob husband look, but it was the whimsical inner lining that caught our eye. For her second collection for Bottega Veneta at the recently concluded Milan Women's Fashion Week, Louise Trotter asked why fur should be limited to its traditional, muted colours in the first place.
And it's not like we're limited to coats only. If the finance boys’ favourite quarter zips have grown upon you lately, Louis Vuitton has a fur version to keep you warm this winter. There's some fur for everyone.
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Dhruv Kapoor agrees, and in his latest collection, themed around the in-between - airports, lifts, the traveller and the transition - he had models walk down in shaggy ushankas and bonded leather jackets. Fur stoles clinged onto their hands and shoulders as a new take on the offhand travel accessory.
In many ways, faux fur has achieved in a few decades what real fur never needed to attempt: reinvention under pressure. It won't be wrong to say that faux fur now has the canvas to evolve beyond what traditional fur ever could. And in doing so, faux’s greatest luxury may well be its freedom to change.