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Fur-get about finding animal cruelty on the catwalk.
With New York’s Fall/Winter Fashion Week just around the corner, the Council of Fashion Designers of America has announced that fur will be gone for good — for most.
Beginning September 2026, real furs are banned from any designer collections showing on the official New York Fashion Week, owned and organized by the CFDA. This makes February’s NYFW showing the last to allow animal hides.
The regulation is in partnership with the Humane World for Animals and Collective Fashion Justice.
Banned materials are defined as “farmed or trapped fur from animals killed specifically for their pelts — including but not limited to mink, fox, rabbit, karakul lamb, chinchilla, coyote and raccoon dog.”
The September timeline was chosen to allow designers to have the space and time to adjust their materials and show plans. The CFDA will support designers through the transition and provide resources on alternatives, a press release said.
Exceptions to the prohibited materials will only be for furs obtained by Indigenous communities through “traditional subsistence hunting practices.”
In a 2024 interview with Vogue, Indigenous artists in North America defended their use of animal pelts against animal cruelty activists.
“They’re using fur for luxury, but we as Indigenous people use fur to respect the animal,” said Yup’ik artist Golga Oscar. Based in Bethel, Alaska, Oscar creates culturally-inspired headdresses, parkas, moccasins and more using traditional garments, inclduding wolf, beaver, muskrat or ground squirrel skins.
“We think of ways to best represent the animal and have a strong spiritual connection with them,” she added.
NYFW already has a limited presence of fur, Steven Kolb, president and CEO of the CFDA, noted.
Chanel ditched exotics and furs back in 2018, while Marc Jacobs renounced the use of fur in 2024 after “bullying” from protestors, stating his namesake brand “does not work in, use or sell fur, nor will we in the future.”
Many designers — such as Coach, Michael Kors, the Prada Group and Armani Group — have been phasing furs out of their collections since the late 2010s, and others like Ralph Lauren have banned fur as early as 2006.
“Consumers are moving away from products associated with animal cruelty, and we want to position American fashion as a leader on those fronts, while also driving material innovation,” Kolb said in a statement.
Condé Nast — which owns Vogue, Vanity Fair and Glamour — also banned animal fur from editorial content and advertising earlier this year, following similar commitments from ELLE and InStyle.
The new position also aligns with London Fashion Week, which banned fur in 2023, as well as fashion weeks in Copenhagen, Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Helsinki and Melbourne.
Emma Håkansson, founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, said that they hope this new stance will encourage Milan and Paris fashion weeks to follow.
Last year, London Fashion Week banned designers from showing collections that feature exotic animal skin, and Copenhagen Fashion Week banned exotic skins from the catwalk earlier in 2024.
“As part of the British Fashion Council’s Positive Fashion Initiative, London Fashion Week is fur-free, wild skins free and exotic skins free,” a spokesperson from the BFC told The Post via email at the time.
“We know that many of our designers have strong ethics and are working towards more sustainable practices and accurate measurement. We are committed to providing our network with tools and resources to help them on this journey.”
