No end in sight for Russian love affair with fur

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

MOSCOW (Reuters Life!) - Under the leaden, snow-filled sky of the notorious Moscow winter, commuters rush to work, their heels teetering on ice, and almost every woman -- and a few men -- wear fur.

In a country which suffers long winters where temperatures regularly drop to minus 30 Celsius, fur is viewed as a necessity, and the animal rights activists of the West are nowhere in sight. Perhaps, because they might freeze to death.

"I think it would be fun to put (anti-fur campaigner) Pamela Anderson for a few weeks here in Russia, in Siberia, and see how she is going to try survive. It's impossible," said Natalya Turovnikova, Russian regional manager of Kopenhagen Fur, the world's largest furrier.

"Our business has not been negatively affected at all by animal rights activists," she added.

The lucrative fur business, which the International Fur Trade Federation (IFTF) puts at about $12 billion annual turnover, sees Russia -- a land free from campaigners -- as a promising market.

"Russia makes up more than half of my fur sales. The potential here is huge," Welsh designer Julien Macdonald, whose extensive use of fur has brought him plenty of criticism in Britain, told Reuters.

"The hassle, the death threats, everything that goes with it I've had, but it's never changed my mind and I do it because I need to... It makes more money than any other part of my business," Macdonald said on the sidelines of the International Herald Tribune's Luxury conference this week in Moscow.

Luxury executives, designers and Saudi royalty gathered at the city's most expensive hotel for the conference, which dedicated half a day to fur and held a fur fashion show.