No Fur on the Runway: Milan and the Future of Fashion

No solo los valores.

Not only values.

You know, I spent years interviewing people about why institutions change, and it almost always comes down to that.

Values push.

Economics pull.

When both point the same direction, change happens fast.

That's what we're watching in Milan right now.

La moda cambia siempre.

Fashion always changes.

Es normal.

That's normal.

Sure, but the pace matters.

The anti-fur movement has been going since the late 1980s.

PETA's first major fur campaign was 1988.

That's nearly forty years of activism to get to one industry body in Milan putting out voluntary guidelines.

Either that's very slow progress or it's actually a tipping point.

I genuinely don't know which.

Las directrices no son obligatorias.

The guidelines are not mandatory.

Eso es el problema.

That's the problem.

That word, voluntary, is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Because if a brand decides to ignore the guidelines and shows fur anyway, what happens?

Nothing, technically.

They're still on the calendar.

The Camera Nazionale has no enforcement mechanism.

Pero la presión social es muy fuerte ahora.

But social pressure is very strong now.

Social pressure and social media are the same thing at this point.

One viral video of protesters outside a show and you've undone your entire marketing budget for the season.

Brands know this.

That's probably more powerful than any written rule.

En España, la gente no habla mucho de esto.

In Spain, people don't talk much about this.

That surprises me, actually.

Madrid has a serious fashion scene.

And Spain has its own complicated relationship with animal welfare more broadly, the bullfighting debate being the obvious flashpoint.

Does the fur conversation connect to those bigger cultural arguments at all?

Sí, los jóvenes conectan estos temas.

Yes, young people connect these issues.

Los mayores no.

Older people don't.

That generational fracture keeps appearing in every part of this story.

It's almost the meta-theme.

Whether we're talking about fur farms in Denmark or bullfighting in Seville or what goes on a runway in Milan, the split is almost always between age groups more than between countries.

La moda también tiene un problema con el medio ambiente.

Fashion also has a problem with the environment.

The sustainability angle is massive and it cuts in multiple directions, which I find genuinely interesting.

Real fur, if you look at some lifecycle analyses, can actually have a lower environmental footprint than synthetic faux fur, which is essentially plastic.

So the ethical case and the environmental case don't always line up neatly.

The industry loves to point this out.

La piel falsa es plástico.

Fake fur is plastic.

Eso también es un problema.

That's also a problem.

It's a genuine paradox and I don't think the fashion industry has resolved it honestly.

Some companies are working on bio-based alternatives, lab-grown materials, things that try to thread that needle.

But they're expensive and they're not at scale yet.

So right now you're largely choosing between one problem and a different problem.

Hay nuevos materiales.

There are new materials.

Cuero de hongos, por ejemplo.

Mushroom leather, for example.

Mycelium leather, yes.

I read about a company called Bolt Threads that's been developing this.

Stella McCartney was one of the first designers to use it publicly.

The material science is genuinely extraordinary.

Whether it ever gets cheap enough to be mainstream, that's still an open question.

Stella McCartney es vegetariana.

Stella McCartney is vegetarian.

Para ella es fácil.

For her it's easy.

That's a fair point.

Her values and her brand identity are completely aligned, so the business decision isn't even a decision for her.

For a house like Fendi, which built its entire heritage on fur, the calculation is completely different.

Fendi tiene un problema grande con esto.

Fendi has a big problem with this.

Fendi is the test case.

Their baguette bag is iconic, their leather goods are iconic, but the fur coats are foundational to what Fendi is.

Karl Lagerfeld spent decades designing their fur collections.

You can't just erase that history.

You have to decide what to carry forward and what to leave behind.

La moda habla de cultura.

Fashion talks about culture.

Es más que ropa.

It's more than clothes.

That's why I kept coming back to this story.

On the surface it looks like a trade association issuing guidelines.

But underneath, it's a question about what values a culture wants to put on display.

A runway is a kind of statement.

What you show says something about who you think you are.

Sí.

Yes.

Y Italia quiere mostrar que cambia.

And Italy wants to show that it changes.

Whether this is genuine change or very sophisticated reputation management, I'd want to watch for a few seasons before calling it.

But even as a signal, it's significant.

Milan just moved the cultural center of gravity, at least a little.

Londres y París también tienen semanas de moda.

London and Paris also have fashion weeks.

London's been largely fur-free at the official level since 2018.

Paris is more complex because you have houses like Chanel that have already committed, but you also have others that haven't.

If Milan formalizes this, Paris is next.

The dominoes have a logic.

Para los animales, esto es bueno.

For the animals, this is good.

Es muy claro.

That's very clear.

On that point I don't think either of us is going to argue the other side.

Though I will say, the conversation about where we draw the line, leather, down, wool, silk, it gets philosophically complicated very fast.

The fur debate is the edge that's most visible, but it's not the only edge.

Octavio tiene una chaqueta de cuero.

Octavio has a leather jacket.

Y no tiene problema.

And he has no problem with it.

There it is.

The philosopher meets the wardrobe.

For what it's worth, I have a pair of cowboy boots from Austin that I intend to wear until I physically cannot.

So we're both implicated.

Las botas de vaquero son diferentes.

Cowboy boots are different.

Son necesarias en Texas.

They're necessary in Texas.

I'll tell my daughter that when she visits.

Actually, you know what caught my ear earlier in this conversation?

You used the word 'pieles' for fur and 'cuero' for leather.

Both come from the same basic thing, skin, but Spanish has split them.

Is that right?

Sí.

Yes.

'Piel' es la piel del cuerpo.

'Piel' is the skin of the body.

De todos.

Of everyone.

So 'piel' covers human skin, animal fur, and the idea of hide, all in one word?

'Piel' es todo.

'Piel' is everything.

'Cuero' es solo para productos.

'Cuero' is only for products.

Para zapatos, bolsos.

For shoes, bags.

So if I wanted to say 'I'm comfortable in my own skin,' I'd say 'me siento bien en mi propia piel.' And if I'm talking about my leather jacket, I say 'chaqueta de cuero.' But a fur coat would be 'abrigo de piel.' The same word covers the animal and the person.

Exacto.

Exactly.

'Me siento bien en mi piel.' Es una frase muy bonita.

'I feel good in my skin.' It's a very nice phrase.

It is a beautiful phrase.

And it puts a different kind of weight on this whole conversation about fur.

In English we've separated the word for human skin from the word for animal hide, which makes it easy to talk about one without thinking about the other.

Spanish keeps them together.

Maybe that's not an accident.

O quizás es solo una palabra.

Or maybe it's just a word.

Fletcher siempre busca filosofía.

Fletcher always looks for philosophy.

That is an absolutely fair criticism and I'm choosing to ignore it.

Thanks for this one, Octavio.

I think I understand Milan a little better now, and I'm going to go home and think about my boots.