From high fashion to mooted material
It was reported in the national press last week that the Queen will no longer buy new outfits containing real fur.
The ‘fur ban’ may not apply to pieces already in Her Majesty’s wardrobe, with the Queen still expected to wear historic items such as the Robe of State, a long mantle which consists of an ermine cape and a long crimson velvet train also lined with ermine, which was made for her Coronation in 1953.
Despite falling out of favour due to increasing animal rights campaigns, fur was once the height of fashion as well as being a statement of one’s wealth and social status.
A 1919 Campbeltown Courier advertisement for The Russian Fur Stores, Glasgow, promotes a week-long sale of the ‘most magnificent collection of furs ever displayed in Campbeltown’. The collection included ladies’ and children’s coats made from skunks, foxes, sables, minks, stoats and white foxes.
It is not the only advertisement which shows the huge difference in attitudes and beliefs 100 years ago, with one notice promoting Wincarnis tonic wine as ‘an offer of new health to all who are weak, anaemic, “nervy” and rundown’. Another demonstrates the stereotypical gender roles which existed at the time as it describes Brown and Polson’s corn flour as ‘a helping hand to housewives’, beside the image of a woman wearing an apron.
Some adverts, however, like those for Campbeltown Picture House, would not look out of place in the Courier today.
Above, gender stereotypes can be seen in this 1919 Courier advert; and above right, tonic wines are not recommended as treatment by today’s doctors but that was not the case in 1919 as shown by this Courier advert; left, Campbeltown Picture House, which continues to advertise its listings in the Courier today, was showing The Lust of the Ages in December 1919.