Reusing vintage fur for hood lining

After making a snow smock for an upcoming arctic expedition, I was ready to source some real fur for the lining of the hood. I opted for real fur as it provides much better insulation in harsh environments than synthetic fur.

Ethically, it’s better to get maximum use from old fur, than waste and send to landfill and replace with new fur. Also, vintage or old fur garments are often cost effective due to public opinion towards wearing real fur for fashion reasons.

After searching well known internet auction sites, an arctic fox stole was sourced , which had been in storage for a number of years and needed a little cleaning up.

As the fur is around 70 years old there was a fair amount of dust in the hairs, so the first job was to shake out any large dirt or dust particles that were trapped. After this I found the seam and opened the pelt up to see the flesh side was stiff so I rubbed in a thin layer of Renapur and left it to soak in for a few days.

After a few days I laid it flat and worked cornflour through the fur to the skin so any dirt or grime stuck to the hair would transfer to the corn flour. Then I combed it through with a pet comb to remove the cornflour and any grime stuck to it.

There was still a fusty smell to the fur, so it was sealed up and hung with some fresh ground coffee in the bottom of the sealed bag. The idea of the coffee is to absorb any odours trapped in the fur. This was left sealed for 48 hours.

After this I combed the fur through with a dry shampoo from the pet shop to recondition the fur and then trimmed the fur to size and fitted some press studs, so I could remove it from the smock for cleaning.

I fitted the press studs so the fur would be rolled over so there was no exposed metal on the outside of the fur, then fitted to the hood. I’m looking forward to testing this on the expedition to see how it performs.