Debbie Leahy says she rarely passes a person wearing a fur without saying something. Usually it’s “Do you know how many animals were killed to make that coat you’re wearing?” Sometimes it’s the more jolting “How’d you get the animals’ blood off that fur before you put it on?”
Earlier this month, when the animal rights activist hit Michigan Avenue, Leahy approached every fur-clad woman she saw with yet another favorite: “I sincerely hope it’s ignorance rather than arrogance that led you to wear that coat.”
She would continue, “The animals can’t speak for themselves, so I’m here on their behalf.” That’s sometimes as far as she’d get before the besieged would hail a taxi, climb on a bus, head for a revolving door, shake a finger in her face or rebuff her with “You’re a fascist!” or “Get a life.”
At Michigan Avenue and Huron Street, Leahy and a mink-clad woman got into a heated argument.
“What a turn-off,” commented Len Fabiano, who with his wife, Patty, happened upon the scene, and was there when a patrol wagon pulled up and three police officers queried the obviously infuriated mink-clad woman and the composed Leahy, in her cloth parka with its bright pink no-fur pin. (Leahy was arrested, charged with assault and has a March 4 court date.)
Coincidentally, Fabiano had just been trying to talk his wife into buying a fur coat.
But watching the street-corner confrontation, he started having second thoughts.
“I wouldn’t want to see her harassed like that,” he said. “Nobody should be badgered for what they’re wearing.”
While an arrest involving alleged harassment for wearing a fur might be a rarity or even a first, it illustrates the strong and increasingly volatile emotions that have re-emerged on both sides of the fur issue as activists have become more aggressive and individual fur wearers are fighting back.
Many furriers as well as industry associations are fairly ebullient at the moment. They point to frigid temperatures and a healthier economic outlook for increases in business this winter and last.
Animal rights activists shoot back, by challenging the fur industry figures; with a billboard over the Sunset Strip in Hollywood featuring a nude Christy Turlington (“I’d rather go naked than wear fur”); with another, featuring five models (including Naomi Campbell), slated to go up in Paris soon; by planting incendiary devices in local stores carrying furs; and with parades, rallys and one-on-one “speak-outs,” the activists’ term for sidewalk encounters, such as Leahy’s, with those wearing furs.
Spokesmen for PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, say that furriers are selling furs so cheaply “they’re giving them away,” that furriers by the dozens are going out of business, and that they have inflated their sales figures by including the sales of leather coats and other outerwear.
Meanwhile, those who own furs seem to be regaining courage not only to bring them out of the closets, where they’ve been sheltered since activists first began their efforts several years ago, but also to face off with the activists who criticize what they’re wearing.
“I can wear anything I want,” said a woman wearing a fox coat on Michigan Avenue. “Why don’t these people put their efforts into working for the homeless, or abused children or something really important?”
`Business is up’
Some fur-wearers trace their renewed confidence to Aretha Franklin, who, displaying a mind-your-own-business attitude about political correctness, appeared swathed in furs during the presidential inauguration festivities last January.
“People are sick to death of the animal rights people telling them what to do,” says Skip Welfeld, longtime co-owner of N.H. Rosenthal Furs, who says he sees “a different attitude” in people coming into his salon. “What’s really turning them off (to activists) isn’t just about fur. Their fanaticism, extremism is working against them.”
Welfeld says: “We’re seeing new customers, lots of young marrieds, career women. Business is definitely up, at least 10 percent over ’92.”
Jack Pearson, vice president and general manager of the Maximilian fur salons in Bloomingdale’s stores nationwide (including the one on Michigan Avenue), says activism and the political correctness of furs aren’t “even topical.”
“Last year, they were conversational. Not anymore,” he says, asserting that business is up in the “low double digits, for the same reason the auto industry’s business is up-the economy is improving. But on top of that, we’re weather-driven and these past two winters have been colder than in years.”
According to Karen Handel, spokeswoman for the Fur Information Council of America, a trade organization representing U.S. fur retailers and manufacturers, fur sales from traditional fur retail outlets rose an average of 10 percent in 1992, and estimates are that there will be another 10 percent increase in 1993.
But not all furriers are flourishing. Chicago-based Evans Inc., which operates 19 company-owned stores as well as leased fur departments around the country, showed a recent third-quarter loss, with revenue down 8.5 percent.
According to the Fur Information Council, 1987 was the fur industry’s best year ever, with sales reaching $1.8 billion. Then, says Handel, along came the stock market crash, the economy took a nosedive, winters were warm and a 10 percent luxury tax was levied in ’90. Fur sales hit a low of $1 billion in ’91.
Closings, but openings too
Things are different now, she says. The luxury tax has been repealed, the economy’s improving.
New Yorker Sandy Parker, owner of Fur World and Sandy Parker Reports, both independent publications covering news of the fur industry, estimates that U.S. fur sales around the country “bounced back another 7 to 10 percent in the past year, which would bring ’93 retail sales to about $1.2 billion, representing the second consecutive increase following a five-year decline and indicates the industry is continuing to recover.”
While PETA (pronounced PEE-ta) claims fur stores have closed because of its efforts, Parker, who has reported on the fur industry for three decades, says there has been retail “shrinkage over the past five years by about a third, but largely due to a matter of economics, not animal rights. Activists take credit for a lot of things that happened when a recession hit.”
Although PETA publicizes store closings, it never mentions expansion. Nordstrom, for example, started carrying furs by customer request in its Oak Brook store’s coat department. A fur salon was opened in the fall and has been doing “very, very well,” according to store spokeswoman Carol Gasper.
Parker believes animal rights activists have stepped up their efforts in recent months because they “lost a lot of media attention there for a while. They seem to be looking for confrontation.”
`We’re escalating’
Jenny Woods, media relations manager for PETA, vigorously contradicts Parker’s comments, furriers’ figures and more.
“A lot of people are coming into the anti-fur fold that we haven’t seen before. We’ve had interest from all over the world thanks to Christy Turlington’s billboard-you know, because a model like Christy would speak out. Teens and college people are more aware. They have a greater sensitivity for animals and that will stay with them.
“We’re escalating (our efforts) a bit, getting more aggressive in our tactics. We feel people wearing fur coats are completely insensitive to animal suffering. Our poster is very graphic and shocking, it shows an animal skinned on a fur farm and shows nothing but a bloody carcass with fur left only on its paws. We’ve had tremendous impact on the street with images, advertising, making people aware of issues.”
In the realm of furs, PETA has concentrated on the issues of cruelty to animals, particularly care and killing of animals.
Their booklets show mangy animals in filthy cages and animals suffering in traps. The booklet refers to “not killing them softly” by use of genital electrocution or neck snapping.
The Fur Farm Animal Welfare Coalition counters with evidence of its humane care practices, which have passed the American Veterinary Association’s standards.
“The only way you can produce quality fur is to produce quality care,” says Tim Sullivan, the coalition’s animal welfare director.
Although 80 percent of the furs sold in this country come from ranch-grown animals (“which are put to sleep the way a vet puts a pet to sleep,” according to Sullivan), activists frequently focus on the trapping of animals and portray grisly scenes.
Radical moves
Janice Henke, who represents the National Trappers Association, argues that trapping is quick, and even necessary.
“If a species is overabundant and if it weren’t trapped for fur, it would have to be killed and disposed of at taxpayer expense,” she says.
The accusations go back and forth. Sullivan sums up this way: “The point to remember is that no matter how an animal is raised or harvested, PETA would be against it. PETA thinks it’s cruel just to have an animal as a pet.”
Representatives of PETA make clear that they are not associated with the radical animal rights organization Animal Liberation Front, which has been linked to terrorist activities and which claimed responsibility for planting fire-starting devices last fall in Saks Fifth Avenue, Marshall Field’s, Carson Pirie Scott and Neiman Marcus.
At that time, the Animal Liberation Front faxed a message to PETA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters which read: “This action signals the start of a new, more intense campaign of economic sabotage against stores which sell fur.”
PETA’s position on the matter is that it neither condemns nor condones such action. Queried about whether such activities might produce a backlash against its own efforts, Woods replied: “Anything but. We’re going international, growing by leaps and bounds, we’ve opened offices in Hamburg, Amsterdam, London.”
PETA, she says, has 400,000 dues-paying ($15 annually) members worldwide. “Most love animals and care about their treatment; some extend that and some become vegetarians and don’t wear animal skins.” Those who work for the organization won’t eat or use any products that derive from animals or insects, including leather, wool, silk, goosedown.
Those who work for PETA are totally committed. They are “vegans,” who eat no fish, meat, fowl, milk, eggs, cheese or even honey. They also adhere to the philosophy of PETA’s co-founder, Ingrid Newkirk, whose basic belief is that there is no justifiable use of animals by human beings.
One of Newkirk’s statements is particularly controversial: “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
It was Debbie Leahy’s lifelong love of animals that attracted her to PETA and activism about seven years ago. Leahy, 38, a computer technician who lives in Warrenville with her husband, Patrick, who’s also a animal rights activist, first saw Newkirk on TV and joined PETA soon afterward.
“The more I learn, the more committed I am,” she said recently. “I go to seminars, demonstrations. I’ve gone to a trapper education course. I’ve done undercover work.
“Am I a radical? Yes. I’m vocal, I go to marches.”
The last group activity she participated in was the anti-fur-Friday rally and parade in Chicago after Thanksgiving. She was surprised that the turnout was “about 300,” compared with “more than 1,000 three or four years ago.”
“A lot of people are under the impression that the issue is won. They’re becoming complacent,” she said.
Not Leahy.
She feels fairly confident about her court hearing since she says she neither chased nor touched the mink-clad woman on Michigan Avenue, but merely tried to give her a “There’s No Excuse” (for wearing fur) card.
“But people like that don’t want to be approached with the reality of their choices because it’s a reflection of their character,” she said. “(They are) vain, shallow and insensitive and don’t want to face that. But, then, a lot of this philosophy that I believe in isn’t mainstream.”
