Fur and sustainability: - a design perspective

This report is a result of the collaborate program between Design School Kolding and Kopenhagen Fur taking place in the period of 2014-2016. It is the result of a research project conducted in the period of August 2014 - December 2015. The findings and conclusions of the report build on qualitative interviews and observations at the premises of Kopenhagen Fur, as well as with stakeholders and collaborate partners in Denmark and in China.

The definition of sustainability in the report must be seen as related to Design School Kolding's research umbrella of Sustainable Futures - a term chosen to unite the scientific areas represented at the school. Thus, the report departs from a design perspective, which means that the content of the report covers four perspectives of the life-cycle of fur after it has left the auction house of Kopenhagen Fur:

• a cultural history perspective that points towards ways of operationalizing shared memory in relation to issues of fur and sustainability (by Sisse Tanderup, PhD in art history)
• a perspective on material processing that point towards ways of promoting and communicating best practices of i.e. dressing and dying of raw skin (by Karen Marie Hasling, PhD in textile engineering)
• a perspective on design processes within the fur sector that point towards traditional and potentially future practices for designing more sustainably (by Ulla Ræbild, PhD in design research)
• a perspective on user experiences of fur garment that point towards potentials for more sustainable practices around retail and communication (by Else Skjold, PhD in user studies and business management).

On the basis of these four sub-projects, the report concludes the following:

Currently, fur is placed very centrally in the moral debates around sustainability, as fur farming highligts environmental and moral concerns of the 21st Century. But the practices around fur can be seen as sustainable, wheather one perceives fur farming - or even making use of fur in garments - as morally acceptable or not. If the fur industry is to survive, it needs to hatch on to the debates taking place around sustainability within the garment sector at large, and to define its own unique position for the future. With a departure in the the four sub-projects, the report lists a line of recommendations for how it would be possible to develop and revitalise traditional and current practices around fur design as benchmark for sustainability, in a way that would talk back to the garment sector at large.