How Textiles are Linked to the Development of Civilization: Fur
My biggest interest in terms of textiles has always been fur. The Fur Trade is very unique in terms of its history and correspondence to New York City, American Manufacturing, and our economy. Alongside cotton from last week’s reading, fur was one of the first big American industries, and created a lot of mass production practices we see today. Fur also holds a very unique depiction throughout history when looking at the textile through an American perspective. Fur, to me, signifies commodification as an American Imperialist trait.
The beginning of fur in the region we now call America has lasted longer than the nation, our government, and the industry we’ve built upon this land. It has been a tradition to almost all indigenous cultures globally to use animal derived products for fashion and function in clothing. Leather fibers have been some of the earliest remnants of human fashion worldwide, dating all the way back to the Stone Age. Particularly in America, the beginnings of fur fashion started with the first colonizers, and their relationship with Native Americans.
When the colonizers first made contact with the native land and Native people, they watched the native relationship between the land and its people. Their contact with Native tribes were often not friendly, and led to more violent circumstances resulting in our world today, but these first actions of contact were very intentional. The colonizers were vulnerable, being on a new land much different than their homes, and they acted guarded and charitable to their benefit. Much of Manhattan today was bought from the Lenape people for a considerable amount of beads. Beads in Europe were made in France from glass, and could be made in mass through factory work at the time. In Native America, beads were made from shells, rocks, bones, and other durable, natural materials, taking extreme work and time to make just one. I use the idea of beads to represent this first step into the American Imperialist persona our country has been built upon.
The early colonizers learned cultivation, hunting, and domestication from Native Americans in order to learn how to live upon this land, and once they understood the society of the Native tribes, they knew how to achieve what they wanted. Coming into America, these colonists saw opportunity, the same way we have seen Western Expansion, the allocations of Hawaii and Alaska, Virgin Islands, all be taken over with the excuse of opportunity. Once New York City was obtained by the colonial government, it was turned into a massive port dock, and America grasped one big fist onto imports and exports. During the early stages of the New York Colony, biggest exports included fur skins and lumber, and soon after, textiles and cotton from the South. Fur skins at this time were bought off different tribes or poorer colonizers falling into the societal lower class, who seized the opportunity. At this time it was not uncommon to know how to hunt,
and to do it often, for means of food and use of byproducts, which meant many women began learning how to sew fur skins into specific garments or designs. When export demands grew, the occupation grew with it, as did the sales and manufacturing of the animals. Fur was New York’s biggest export for a while, and soon mass produced fashion would be too as the machinery down South continued to expand rapidly. Alongside the mass production of cotton textiles, and garments as a whole, mass production of fur soon became the industry standard.
By the 1910s marked the beginning of the height of New York City’s 76 year run as the Fur capital of the world, before we moved most American manufacturing over to China. The 1910 fashion industry was one of low worker safety standards, and low moral regard to animal product manufacturing still seen today. Industry standards in the US always cut costs to increase profits, which has even changed the way we process fur skins and hides from a natural one to a chemical one. The fur industry began their ties to agricultural spaces in fur farming practices, which are consistently protested against these days. According to The Humane Society, around 85% of American produced fur in 2022 was fur farmed, which has vastly more profit driven motivations in their regulations rather than hunting and trapping, which is lawfully protected by ecological standards that are meant to benefit both hunters and the ecosystem they choose to hunt in.
In terms of current jobs in the fur industry in America, as it is still tied with agriculture, you see a lot of mistreatment of workers. Farming practices are known to be highly unregulated and many immigrants are at the frontline of the hard work. In New York City, many immigrants and generational fur shop owners / exporters are still facing working class issues. Because the fur industry is now run mainly out of China, major industry cuts in America have been made since 1986. The last standing businesses are small, often family owned and run, and face continuous stress from the economy, as fur falls away from the mainstream, and hasn’t been as significant to fashion in America as it had been in previous decades.
This brings us to status. Fur garments as a status symbol have wavered as American Society’s views on complementary factors waver. In the 1910s and soon after, fur as a commodity was a symbol of status only when achieved through newformed ways of American production, marketing, and shopping culture. Hunted pieces with imperfections due to bullet holes, or mangled faces were not fashionable, the way they certainly could be now since we’ve had such a cold turkey withdrawal of fur in recent decades. Peta’s roots were planted in the early 1980s, and they used many ruthless marketing techniques seen in today’s social media and influencer culture. Peta really took the main stage in the 1990s, which coincided with the move of mass production in the fur industry to China.
Peta’s influence alongside mass push for animal rights legislation to be passed in the early 2000s resulted in a loss of stability as a classic trend in the upcoming decades, which is why most American fur companies remain small businesses. Fur garments have gone through polarizing trend phases almost back to back; symbolizing wealth disparity like paint protests against Anna Wintour, as well as the reclamation of the style worn in vintage pieces, often passed down through generations within some Black families. Fur has certainly become a polarized subject, and its progression as an industry coincides with much of what American Industry has meant throughout time, from colonization of materials and practices, creating industry standards for cutting costs, to the ostracization of the workers who built what was once an industry hallmark and pride point for America, in order to increase investor profits in the end.
