Fur stays out of fashion with high street customers

It may be winter's biggest fashion trend, but designers have been warned to steer clear of fur if they want to stay in favour with their customers in a report published today.

Nearly 90 per cent of British adults say they would never wear real fur despite its reappearance on the catwalk; 80 per cent believe trapping wild animals for their fur should be banned and 66 per cent also want a ban on farming animals for their fur.

The survey was commissioned by Marie Claire magazine and the RSPCA to test public reaction to the trend towards fur in this winter's fashions. Marie Claire editor Juliet Warkentin said: "It proves overwhelmingly that the majority of people in the UK are anti-fur. It may be one of the season's biggest fashion stories, but looking at these results makes you wonder who's wearing it."

David Bowles of the RSPCA said by far the biggest reason for people turning down fur garments was because they believed it was morally wrong to wear them. However, more than one in 10 said it was cost that put them off the real thing and others said they left it out of their wardrobes because it was unfashionable. The survey also found that more than half of the UK public said the Government should be able to ban fur imports from countries where animals were treated cruelly. The EU recently signed an agreement on animal trapping with the Russian Federation and Canada to prohibit the import of furs caught in steel-jawed leghold traps by 2000. It is also planning to ban imports of pelts from the US - worth an estimated pounds 14 m - from the end of the year if it does not sign up to the agreement.