Recycling a vintage mink coat

One of the types of responsible fur we use at Tallis is vintage fur, that is, fur from a garment made some time ago which is not worn any more.  We use vintage fur as it means not having to use new fur.

 

This post is about a vintage fur coat from England which we turned into mink pom-poms to use on our Beret Mini Pom and Impy Beanies hats.  First we selected the coat (below left), it's a 'light pastel' which varies in colour as you move across the coat, meaning it would give us pom-poms from a pale cream to a dark camel.  The coat was turned into 289 small pom-poms, individually sewn by hand in London.  Each time we get an order, the pom-poms are then hand-sewn onto our hats and shipped to their new homes.  

 

Re-manufacturing fur is something we have done for generations.  Fur is a strong, resistant material designed to weather the elements, and if it is well looked after so that it remains supple, it can be reworked a few times over in its lifetime.  Due to the way fur behaves, a professional furrier can cut and re-stitch it with an invisible seam.  In fact, many fur garments you see are made up of cut and re-stitched fur pieces, a term known as 'letting-out'.  Here is Mark working on his fur machine, his family have been furriers for three generations.

 

We use vintage fur because it means not having to use new fur from a farm.  At Tallis, we define "vintage" with a cut-off date of 1975, which allowing for a few years margin of error, means we are only using garments made 35 years ago or more.  This is of course a finite resource, as pre-1975 fur coats will run out one day.