Recently this column has examined the development of the modern synthetic fabrics that replicated natural materials, even fake furs. Along with leather, furs have been used as body coverings since time immemorial, becoming desirable fashion items and status symbols by the Middle Ages. Throughout medieval and Tudor Europe, heavy winter robes and gowns were often edged and lined with warm fur. Exotic and costly furs like lynx, ermine and miniver (the white winter coat of the red squirrel) signified wealth and high social rank, while ordinary people used common lambskin, coney (rabbit) and cat. By the late 1500s, many European furs were already growing scarce, due to shifting agricultural practices and the depletion of ancient forests through the relentless pursuit of wild animals in the name of fashion.

Access to new animal species and their pelts followed the opening-up of the vast resources of North America and Canada by trappers and traders from the 1600s. Marten, elk, deer and seal were all hunted for use in dress, but the greatest prize was beaver skin, which formed the basis of formal brimmed ‘beaver hats’, also known as castors. Indeed, through all the stylistic changes in male and female headwear throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, from the sweeping cavalier styles of the Stuart age to the gentlemanly tricornes, military bicornes and country ‘wideawake’ hats of the Georgian era and finally the upstanding early Victorian top hat, the demand for castors remained constant. The Hudson’s Bay Company (incorporated in 1670) estimated that by the mid 1800s around half a million beavers were being slaughtered annually for that purpose alone.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries many other furs, from sable and ermine to squirrel and fox, were popular for men’s and women’s cloak/coat trimmings and linings, and ladies’ stoles (‘tippets’) and wraps, while vast pillow-sized muffs of bearskin and other shaggy varieties were high-fashion Regency/late Georgian requisites. Up until the mid 1800s, animal furs were usually limited to the lining of garments, as warm and decorative trimmings and as sumptuous winter accessories. However the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace, London demonstrated the vast array of furs available globally by then, from lambskin and chinchilla rabbit hair to silky sealskin, wolf and raccoon. Now, in mid-Victorian Britain, at a time of growing middle-class prosperity and ever more conspicuous consumption, entire outdoor garments fashioned entirely of fur began to be displayed by an affluent and privileged elite, setting a trend for the future. {