Old habits die hard. Despite luxury brands, wholesale retailers, and fashion councils moving to ban animal fur, it remains one of fashion’s most contentious — and enduring — trends. Designers continue to emulate the drama and volume of fur with plastic or plant-based alternatives, stoking desire for the aesthetic, and consumers continue to flip-flop over whether or not fur is acceptable. At New York Fashion Week this past February, fur — both real and fake — was everywhere.

Late last week, the fur industry was dealt another blow. Italian fashion council Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI) issued voluntary guidance for brands showing at Milan Fashion Week, encouraging them to remove fur from the runway as early as September.

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It wasn’t an outright ban, like those adopted by Copenhagen, Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Melbourne, London, and New York fashion weeks in recent years. In fact, CNMI was careful to position the guidance as “an instrument of advocacy”, which “in no way restricts brands’ creative or business autonomy”. This means fashion houses like Fendi, one of the few luxury brands still working with animal fur and a staple on the Milan Fashion Week schedule, will still be able to use the textile, although CNMI will not promote these products. Fendi did not respond to a request for comment, and its parent company LVMH declined to comment. Per their 2025 impact reports, 100% of the pelts Fendi used and 99.6% of the pelts LVMH used in 2025 were Furmark certified, in line with the group’s Animal-based Raw Materials Sourcing Charter. The Furmark certification, developed by the International Fur Federation (IFF), aims to promote tighter traceability, environmental and animal welfare standards in fur sourcing. (Certification fees mean LVMH is among the most significant donors to the IFF, a major pro-fur lobbyist on the EU stage.)

Still, it was a major coup for campaigners who have long seen Milan and Paris as the last bastions of fashion’s obsession with fur, and could add heat to a longstanding debate as to whether the European Union (EU) will issue a market-wide ban on fur production and sales.

“This has been a long time coming,” says Collective Fashion Justice (CFJ) founder and director Emma Håkansson, who advised CNMI on the guidance, alongside Humane World for Animals and Italian non-profit Lega Anti Vivisezione (LAV). “We would still like to see a formal policy from CNMI. But for them to take a position that they oppose the use of fur, and encourage Italian fashion brands not to use it, is a really meaningful step forward.”

The guidance does not advocate for a blanket ban on animal-derived products. There are plenty of exceptions and technicalities at play. The main materials CNMI is seeking to phase out are taken from animals that are captured in the wild, or reared in captivity exclusively for the purpose of fur production: fox, mink, coyote, Finn raccoon, ermine, rabbit, and karakul. Animal-derived products like wool — which are obtained without killing the animal — are compliant with CNMI’s guidance, as are materials shorn, shaven, or combed from animals that are primarily reared for food (meaning sheep, lambs, goats, calves, and cows).

This means leather and shearling — which is fast becoming a loophole for brands seeking animal-derived alternatives to fur with less stigma attached — are also allowed. Like the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) before it, CNMI opted to exempt fur obtained by Indigenous communities using traditional subsistence hunting techniques, and like Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW), it will allow post-consumer or vintage fur that has been upcycled or repurposed.

“The main difference is that fur is not prohibited on the runway at Milan Fashion Week, but it is not condoned,” says Håkansson. “So if a brand decides to put fur on the runway, it will have to deal with the cultural impact of going against the Italian fashion council’s request, which is significant, and it will have to accept that CNMI will not promote those products.”

This isn’t the first time CNMI has published principles and requirements for brands. Its previous missives span eco-toxicology and chemical use, sustainable retail, and manufacturing practices. “The publication of these guidelines is a further step in the drive for responsibility and sustainability that CNMI has been carrying forward for over a decade now in support of Made in Italy,” CNMI chair Carlo Capasa said in a statement. “This initiative reasserts CNMI’s determination to approach the evolution of the fashion industry with full awareness and a sense of balance in line with the strategies we already have in place.”

An industry in decline

The fur industry has been in steady decline for a decade now, as public opinion, corporate policies, and government regulation have run in the opposite direction. In parallel, alternatives have become more varied, sophisticated, and readily available. There’s China-based Ecopel, whose bio-based faux fur incorporates corn waste; upcycled plastic yarn Seaquel; and Biofluff, whose plant-based faux fur Savian appeared on the runway at both Collina Strada and Louis Vuitton in February. “Banning fur doesn’t mean limiting creativity,” says Biofluff co-founder and chief commercial officer Roni Gamzon. “We work a lot with design teams and textile teams to create new textures and push their creativity even further. Natural solutions can absolutely compete in terms of luxury, storytelling, and creativity. This is just the beginning.”

According to policy analyst Griffin Carpenter, the number of EU fur farms has fallen by 73% in the past decade, while the number of pelts has dropped by 86%, the value of sales by 92%, and employment by 86-92%. EU fur farming produced 6.3 million pelts in 2024, worth an estimated €183 million in sales value. This is comparable to buffalo milk farming, sour cherry farming, or the rental of video tapes and disks. It also has a very limited impact on employment, adds Dr. Joanna Swabe, senior director of public affairs at Humane World for Animals Europe. “Fur farming is seasonal work, so there aren’t many full-time employees, and only a handful of countries still engage with it,” she explains. “In some countries — like Greece — fur farms are concentrated in a specific area, so there would be some impact there, but in general, there are very few people actually involved in it.”

Very few European countries still produce fur. The UK and Austria were the first countries to ban fur farming at the start of the century (2003 and 2005, respectively), though there has been a steady stream of bans since, accelerated by the pandemic. The Netherlands, once Europe’s second largest mink producer, shut down its domestic fur mink farming industry in 2021, three years ahead of schedule, following a spate of Covid outbreaks on respective farms. Outside Europe, the Canadian province of British Columbia also followed suit.

Others had different motivations. Norway, previously the world’s largest producer of fox fur, ended the practice after evidence of shocking welfare violations came to light. France banned the breeding of non-domestic species for fur in 2021, which shuttered the two remaining farms, while Spain moved to phase out fur farming in 2022, because of the threat invasive American mink posed to its biodiversity. In December, Poland instigated a fur farming phase-out, which should be complete by January 2034 — a landmark victory for anti-fur campaigners, hitting Europe’s largest remaining fur producer, second only to China.

“The writing is on the wall,” says Swabe.

Inching toward a fur-free Europe

With so many EU member states banning fur production, campaigners say it’s only a matter of time before the EU mandates a wholesale ban on fur farming and sales. But the regulatory process is far from linear, and a lot of hurdles remain.

In March 2022, the European Commission acknowledged the Fur Free Europe campaign, which invited the commission to prohibit the keeping and killing of animals for the sole or main purpose of fur production, as well as the placement of farmed animal fur (or products containing such fur) on the EU market. By June 2023, the petition had garnered more than 1.5 million signatures, meaning the commission had to weigh its options.

The EU Commission then invited the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to look into animal welfare on fur farms. The report found that fur farms do not give animals enough room to move freely, nor the chance to do what they normally would in the wild (explore, dig, chew, or search for food); and there was “either too much or too little” sensory stimulation (light, noise, smell). It concluded that “current cage-based systems make it hard to meet the physical and behavioral needs of fur animals” — what Swabe calls a “damning indictment” of fur farming. “Essentially, they concluded that the current circumstances make it impossible to make any kind of meaningful improvement in animal welfare, because no commercial systems could accommodate the kind of enclosures or alternatives to cages that they would need,” she explains.

Now, campaigners are waiting with baited breath for the European Commission to make a final decision. This was expected in March or April, but was postponed after Politico leaked a draft communication suggesting that animal welfare commissioner Olivér Várhelyi would opt for tighter animal welfare standards instead of an outright ban, sparking public backlash. The lack of consensus has turned this into something of a “political mess”, says Swabe. (The EU does not comment on leaked documents, but a spokesperson for the commission said “a series of consultation activities have been undertaken to assess all possible options, and all stakeholders were involved”.)

Even in the best-case scenario, it could be a while before either a ban or tighter regulations come to fruition. A proposal to end fur farming entirely would be quicker and more straightforward to write, but a proposal on tighter animal welfare standards could take until the end of 2027 to complete. Either way, the proposal will then need to be considered by both the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, before all three institutions debate how it should be amended, strengthened, or weakened. That process can take up to 18 months, after which the member states would still need to cascade that decision into local regulations and enforce them.

Given that the current European Parliament ends in May 2029, it will be “down to the wire”, says Swabe. “Most likely, it will be the 2030s, not the 2020s before the phase-out is complete,” adds Håkansson. (A ban on the sale of fur in Europe — which would have a knock-on effect on fur farming outside the EU — is the long-term goal, but unlikely to pass before fur farming has been phased out.)

To get fashion to change its ways, and completely stamp out animal fur, requires both industry policies and regulatory controls. “Industry and intergovernmental policy bounce off each other,” says Håkansson. “The EU is actively seeking evidence that the fashion industry would support legislation, and the industry needs to be aware that there is potential legislation, because it pushes them to move faster. Neither exist in a vacuum, which is why it’s so important to push for both.”