How Can I Tell Real Fur From Faux Fur?

The honest starting point is that you cannot rely on the label, and not because sellers are dishonest. It is because labelling law runs out sooner than most people assume, and because a garment made decades ago carries a label written under rules that may no longer exist.

Where the label stops

In the United States, the Fur Products Labeling Act governs how fur is described. For a long time it carried an exemption: if the fur content of a product cost the manufacturer $150 or less, it did not have to be disclosed. The Truth in Fur Labeling Act of 2010 eliminated that exemption, and it has not been in effect since 18 March 2011. The Commission's amended Fur Rules took effect on 19 November 2014.

In the European Union, Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 requires that the presence of non-textile parts of animal origin in a textile product be indicated with the phrase “Contains non-textile parts of animal origin.” But the regulation's scope treats as textile products those containing at least 80% by weight of textile fibres. Animal-welfare organisations have pointed out what follows: the more fur a garment contains, the more likely it falls outside the rule that would require it to be labelled.

Add to this a vintage garment whose label is missing, illegible, replaced, or predates the current regime entirely, and the conclusion is not that labels are worthless. It is that they are a starting point and not a verdict — which is why it is worth being able to answer the question yourself.

Rules on labelling, sale and import also differ by country and, in the United States, by state and by city, and they change. The rest of this is a way of checking with your own hands. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for the current rules where you live.

Four checks, in the order you should do them

1. The base

This is the one that settles most cases, and it needs nothing but your fingers. Part the pile down to the bottom and look at what the hairs come out of. Real fur emerges from tanned skin — it looks and feels like thin leather. Faux fur is sewn or knitted into a fabric backing, and you will see the weave or the mesh.

Do this first. It marks nothing and costs nothing. If you can see fabric, you are done.

2. The pin

Where the base is hard to see — a trim, a collar, a lining in the way — push a pin through it. It slides through a fabric backing easily. It meets real resistance going through a tanned hide.

A pin leaves a permanent hole in a hide. Do this to a garment you own, or with the owner's permission, and go in through a seam allowance rather than the face of the skin. Not to a coat sitting on someone else's rail.

3. The hair tips

Real fur has two layers: longer, coarser guard hairs over shorter, finer underfur. The guard hairs taper to a fine point, the way human hair does. Synthetic fibres are usually cut, so they end bluntly, at a uniform length.

The important caveat, and it is the one usually left out: this test is unreliable on sheared fur. Shearing cuts the guard hairs off, so genuine sheared fur has blunt ends too. A blunt tip proves nothing. A tapered tip is good evidence; its absence is not evidence of anything.

4. The burn — last, and rarely

A few fibres only, taken from a seam allowance where the loss will not show, held to a flame over a sink or another non-flammable surface, in a ventilated room with nothing nearby that can catch. Real hair singes, smells like burnt human hair, and leaves a brittle ash. Synthetic fibre melts, smells like burning plastic, and hardens into a small bead.

Two warnings that belong with it. Burning synthetic fibre gives off toxic fumes, and the test works by smell — so use the smallest tuft that will light, waft the smoke towards you rather than putting your face over it, and do not repeat it for confirmation. Molten synthetic sticks to skin and keeps burning; hold the fibres with tweezers, not fingers.

It is conclusive, and it destroys what it tests. Do not do this to a garment you do not own. On a coat you are considering, the first three checks are what you have, and they are usually enough.

What none of these tests will tell you

They separate animal from synthetic. That is all they do.

They do not identify the species. They do not date the pelt. They do not distinguish farmed from wild, or tell you where the skin came from. If species matters to you for ethical or legal reasons, a look and a burn test will not get you there; microscopic or laboratory analysis is what that question requires.

The tests also do not tell you whether the coat is any good. That is a separate question, and it is answered on the skin side rather than the hair side — see whether a vintage fur coat is worth buying.

Why bother

Because the alternative is deferring to a label that the law did not necessarily require anyone to write, on a garment that may be older than the rule. Ninety seconds and your own hands beat that, and the knowledge does not expire.

For the material itself — pelt types, houses, how the trade organised itself — read The Fur Story, or look at what is in the fur archive and astrakhan and Persian lamb now.