LONDON, United Kingdom – For many of fashion’s iconic characters, from Vogue‘s Anna Wintour to the prolific designer Karl Lagerfeld, who designs for Chanel, Fendi and his eponymous label, fashion and fur go hand in hand. Just last week, Lagerfeld vigorously defended the use of fur to the BBC saying that “in a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish.”

Of course, there are plenty of people who would disagree with this point of view – the folks at PETA, for one.  A PETA spokesperson told London’s Daily Telegraph that Lagerfeld is “a fashion dinosaur who is as out of step as his furs are out of style. The vast majority of fur these days comes not from hunters as he suggests, but from Chinese fur farms, where no law protects the millions of animals who are routinely beaten and skinned alive.”

So, who’s right?

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December Consumer Confidence Approaches Six-Year Low (Seeking Alpha)
Amid bleak economic news, American consumer confidence continues to decline sharply.

In Poland, Style Comes Used and by the Pound (New York Times)
In Poland, “thrift stores here have become impromptu laboratories of the changing mores and attitudes in a country adjusting to newfound wealth.”

Disposable fashion: for sale, hardly worn: two million tonnes of clothes (Times UK)
The frequency of clothing purchases have have significantly accelerated in recent years and as a result, “textiles have become the fastest-growing waste product in the UK.”

Year in Fashion: Fashion Crisis (WWD)

This tumultuous year has illuminated the fact that the fashion system is broken.

Image courtesy of Pantagrapher.

LONDON, United Kingdom – Just a few years ago, the concept of Ethical Luxury was dismissed by major luxury brands. Products based on environmental concerns and fair trade principles were associated with hippies. Most fashion conscious cosmopolites wanted nothing to do with the Birkenstocks, baggy pants, and hemp T-shirts of the so-called green movement.

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MILAN, Italy – A few months back, I published an article about the Made in Italy label, following damaging findings aired in a provocative Italian documentary on the state of luxury manufacturing in Italy.

In the meantime, there has been growing interest in the concept of ethical luxury, but some of the biggest manufacturers continue to flout the rules and standards.

Just yesterday, a new reader of the BoF named Lauren, provided detailed commentary on our previous article Made in Italy | Time for accountablity regarding the egregious behaviour of major Luxury brands which she has observed first hand. Her observations merit further discussion and debate, and so I have included them here.

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