Fur Free Alliance Information About Use of Fur Bearing Animals for Fur

Students and Teachers

As a compassionate designer, you can make a real difference for millions of animals.

The Fur Free Alliance is holding our sixth-annual Design Against Fur poster competition! And, for the first time our new International Flash Animation Contest.

We invite students and teachers from around the world to participate in this important contest with a conscience. Design a creative, compelling poster that delivers this year's message that the wearing of fur is cruel and unnecessary. The contest is open to students of fashion, design, fine arts, advertising, marketing, graphic design multi-media, and all other disciplines in colleges around the world.

We want the modern world to embrace all animals and not victimize them by killing them to wear their skins. We want you to help us make that happen. Your work will be evaluated by design and marketing experts, and potentially used in national and international campaigns to end the cruel fur trade. The winners will receive handy cash prizes! The competition will take place in two phases. Winners of the Regional Competitions will go forward to an International Competition. The Grand Prize Winner wins $2,500 US!

In November 2008, the regional winners' posters will be part of a high-profile world-wide-web vote for The People's Choice Award. The poster receiving the most votes wins $1,000 US.

The Message:
Convey the message that the wearing of fur is cruel and unnecessary.

The Goal:
Make fur unfashionable. Convince consumers that killing animals for their fur is a fashion faux pas.

Target Audience:
Who are they?
They are image conscious women aged 18-30 who have a relatively high disposable income which they like to spend on clothes and accessories—often shopping at high-end fashion stores, department stores and designer shops. They are sociable and ambitious and take pride in looking good. They often indulge in the reading of fashion magazines and being very fashion conscious. They always strive to stay in touch with the latest trends.

What do they currently think?
Many consumers naively believe that the fur sold in shops is fake. They're aware of the years of adverse publicity about the wearing of fur. They may even have supported the anti-fur movement or at least paid lip service to it. Now they feel that the fur issue has gone away, that campaigns of the 1980s did their job so the fur must be fake.

Some consumers don't even know they're buying real fur as it's now sheared and dyed and sometimes woven or knitted to look like material and is promoted as a fabric rather than the skins and fur of animals. Sheared and dyed fur is used to make coats and sweaters, and fur trim for collars, cuffs, hats, blankets, scarves, bikinis, purses, shoes and boots.

Others think it is no longer 'fashionable' to be 'anti-fur', and that fur has become acceptable to wear. For example, fashion reporters are stating, "all the celebs and supermodels are wearing it..." Consequently, fur trim and accessories may already be in their wardrobes.

Some consumers simply do not care about the suffering of animals in the production of a fur garment or trim. They're just interested in what the fashion industry tells them is "fashionable".

Background
New manufacturing techniques are producing lighter more flexible furs which have allowed the industry to diversify its product from uniform mink/fur coats to a wide range of fashion items for everyday use that are readily available in any retail store.

The fur industry has revitalized and reinvented itself by using extensive high end advertising in stylish magazines using supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen and Elle MacPherson to present a fashionable image. They've cloaked the horrors of the fur trade in respectability.

The fur industry has invested huge sums of money encouraging fashion designers to use fur. Appallingly, over 330 designers, from Chanel to Marc Jacobs, are including fur in their Autumn 2007 ready to wear collections—and where designers lead, the high end fashion stores follow.

Production and manufacturing have moved to China providing vastly reduced costs, and, at the same time, they've taken advantage of the booming economy and belief that "westerners" are leading style setters to China, Russia and Korea to develop huge new markets for a broader range of everyday products.

Style leaders like rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs and well known singer Jennifer Lopez prominently wear fur to promote an image of being in style with no regard to the impact they are directly having on the suffering of animals.

Facts About Fur:
Factory farmed fur is cruelty on a mass scale for a frivolous product. One animal per second dies for the fur trade. Fur is not a by-product of the meat industry (as with leather)—it is factory farmed and/or trapped purely for fashion. Often a number of animals (e.g. 60 mink or 100 hamsters) are killed to make one garment. Fur trim is not the 'leftovers' from making full length fur coats: more animals are killed to make fur trim than for full-length fur coats. This is because there is a larger market for fur collars than fur coats.

Fur bearing animals endure hideous suffering and death. They are caught in the wild with snares, leg hold and conibear traps and endure excruciating pain. Death can take days. In a desperate attempt to escape, many try to chew their limbs off. When the trapper returns, the animal will be shot or clubbed to death if they are still alive. Others die of infection or become prey to other animals. Snares, leghold and conibear traps are indiscriminate and often non-targeted animals are caught and deemed as "trash", even though they may be members of endangered species.

Fur factories subject animals to a life time of suffering and death. Animals spend their entire lives in small, filthy cages, madly pacing back and forth out of stress and boredom. Cannibalism is often the grim reality of this psychological distress. There is no humane slaughter legislation to protect these animals. Fur farmers use gruesome killing methods that include gassing, suffocation, neck breaking, anal and vaginal electrocution.

China's fur farms now produce 80% of the world's fur pelts. As there are no animal welfare laws in China, foreign and national investigators have documented unimaginable acts of cruelty to animals. Two million dogs and cats meet an agonizing and painful death to have their pelts turned into full length coats, fur trim and cheap trinkets in just China alone.

Furthermore, contrary to the deceitful claims of the fur industry, fur is not an eco-friendly product. The fur industry relies on the heavy use of toxic caustic acids to treat pelts which would otherwise rot as fur garments.

2008 sponsors

Previous Competitions
Design Against Fur 2003 Design Against Fur 2004 Design Against Fur 2005 Design Against Fur 2006 Design Against Fur 2007