Why fur coats are an on-off thing: The trade says business is better, but Roger Tredre doubts that the British will buy

IN JULY 1979 Fay Funnel, a 36- year-old housewife from Camberley, Surrey, left her husband to look after the children and queued for nine days outside Debenhams in Oxford Street to buy a mink jacket in the summer sales. The jacket, valued at pounds 795, was knocked down to pounds 79. But when the doors finally opened and Mrs Funnel laid her hands on the fur, she took it outside, dumped it in a rubbish bin and set it on fire. The fur trade, she said, was cruel, whether dealing in trapped or farmed animals. 'One hundred and fifty minks have died to make this jacket,' she said. 'As far as I am concerned, it is just a delayed cremation for the animals.'

Fourteen years on, Mrs Funnel's spectacular protest no longer seems necessary. While there are no reliable statistics on sales in Britain, only 60 stores are thought to sell furs. Campaigners against the trade claim the combined fur sales of these stores is little more than pounds 15m. Debenhams, the group that aroused Mrs Funnel's ire, stopped stocking furs in 1988. Harrods closed its department in 1990. Recent years have seen a steady stream of specialist stores closing down, bowing to the slowdown in demand. Polls consistently suggest that about 75 per cent of people disapprove of the wearing of furs, with the young voicing the strongest objections.

Yet this winter the reverse claim is being made. The Fur Education Council, a lobby group founded in 1990 to put the trade's case, is telling anyone prepared to listen that the tide of opinion is swinging back its way, and a series of publicity stunts, including a 'Wear Your Fur Coat Day', have rammed home their message. Fabian Furs and Calman Links in Knightsbridge, London, say the market is buoyant again. In London, a young designer fresh out of fashion college has launched his own collection of mink, fox and nutria amid much fanfare. Meanwhile fur-trimmed coats have been spotted in department stores hitherto thought to have ceased stocking furs, and the fashion page of the Daily Telegraph has unequivocally announced that 'fur is back'.

To cap it all, Lynx, the pressure group opposed to the trade, went into voluntary liquidation last Friday after losing a libel case against a mink farmer: the bill of pounds 40,000 in damages and more than pounds 100,000 in costs was well beyond the resources of the group, which relied on donations from its members and supporters.

Does this amount to a genuine comeback? Yes and no. Fur is certainly making a strong statement on the fashion catwalks, notably from Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior and Fendi. Its use in trims and linings has been revived, bringing back memories of the mid-Thirties, when every other winter coat produced by the leading fashion houses came with fur collars and cuffs.

But there is little to suggest that the British will start splashing out on animal pelts again. Central London retailers acknowledge that most of their business is with foreigners. The Fur Education Council has come up with no figures to back its claims of improved sales.

And there is more to it. Putting aside the effects of the recession and the cruelty-to-animals arguments of campaigners, there is something in the British psyche that reacts against fur. It reeks of money (mink coats cost well over pounds 1,000), and the British are rarely comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth.

Colin McDowell, the fashion historian, says: 'The British don't like to see people parading their wealth. And those who have the wealth feel uncomfortable parading it. We are still puritanical.'

As recently as 20 years ago, London was the heart of the international business in ranched and wild furs, but Britain was usually no more than a staging post. Furs were auctioned here, then re-

exported to 60 countries. Although Harrods reported its best year for fur sales in 1972, the bulk of those sales were to tourists and foreigners resident in London. These days, although you still see plenty of such coats in Knightsbridge, most are worn by visitors.

French, Italian, even German women, do not share the reticence of the British. They spend considerably more on clothes and they wear brighter colours, more luxurious fabrics, and designs that the average Briton considers lurid in the extreme. In fashion terms, we are a long way from a Europe without frontiers.

On the Continent, men are proud to buy their wives fur coats: it is a sign that they have 'arrived'. In Germany, fur's popularity has been traced back to the time of the Kleiderordnung or 'dress code', which listed the various types of pelt that could be worn depending on social rank.

In the Eighties, lobby groups exploited another British trait to devastating effect: our soppiness about animals, particularly cuddly ones. We roared with anger at the steel-jaw leg traps used in Canada. No matter that most of the fur on the British market was farmed. Lynx struck a chord with a series of well-pitched advertisements featuring high-profile people - such as the photographer David Bailey - offering their services for free. 'It takes up to 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat, but only one to wear it,' read one advertisement.

The contrast with the Continent is again marked. In France, old women swear that the wearing of cat-skin coats eases rheumatism. German manufacturers still turn out coats with hamster linings.

Arguably the most effective of Lynx's campaigns was a poster depicting a recumbent fur-clad model ('rich bitch') alongside a dead fox ('poor bitch'), capitalising on the British love for animals and distrust of ostentation.

So will fur make a comeback here? It seems unlikely. Members of Lynx, including Carol McKenna, its campaign director, said this week that they were determined to continue their work through a new organisation. But maybe such groups are redundant. They have already won the battle in Britain - albeit for reasons more closely linked to our national characteristics than to the debatable strengths of the moral argument put forward by animal rights activists.

(Photographs omitted)