Maintaining fur
- 13 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Shee Roeting and Myrte De Vidts
Owning fur involves continuous care. As garments made from organic matter, like skin and hair, fur objects remain vulnerable to insects, moisture, odour and decay. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fur maintenance carried important cultural meanings related to class, modernity and Western identity. The care of fur was therefore tied to wider questions of hygiene, taste, and the uneasy place of animal materials within bourgeois fashion.
Fur is neither stable nor “finished”. Long after an animal has been slaughtered and transformed into a garment, it continues to change. Hairs loosen, skin dries out, and colour fades in the light, while heat, damp and poor ventilation accelerate decay. Insects pose the most serious threat; especially clothes moths (Tineola bisselliella) whose larvae feed on fur, leaving bald patches and a powdery residue known as frass. To own fur is to manage a small and unstable ecology, in which wearing, storing, and preserving are continually disrupted by the lifecycles of other (non-human) species.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this instability made caring for fur routine rather than occasional. For example, furriers, or bontwerkers, recommended preventive measures such as regular brushing and airing, and storage in dark, cool places. Older household practices included placing sachets of dried herbs among garments, while the use of chemical insecticides such as paradichlorobenzene were also used. Commercial cleaners offered more intensive treatments like combing sawdust soaked in white spirit through the fur. These methods provided only partial protection and could damage the garments.
By the early twentieth century, refrigerated storage offered a more reliable solution. Belgian furriers advertised services to preserve furs -- “bewaart uwe pelswerken” -- by keeping customers’ garments in cold storage during summer. Often combined with cleaning, repair, or alteration works, this allowed older furs to be maintained and updated for changing fashions. Fur care became an ongoing negotiation between preservation and renewal: slowing the decay while keeping garments current.
At the same time, perfumed antiseptic solutions such as “Lavande Ambrée de Bourbon,” sold for cleaning fur, among other uses, linked fur care to the hygiene culture of the period. In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western Europe, smell was treated as a sign of cleanliness, self-discipline and respectability. Pleasant scents signalled refinement, while bad odours were associated with poverty, moral failure and racialised ideas of inferiority.
Within this context, fur occupied an unstable position. As animal matter worn directly on the body, it could retain or develop odours described as “musty” or “animal-like.” Women’s magazines and household manuals warned against these odours, advising readers how to prevent them. Antiseptic and deodorising products were marketed for both fur and human skin, aligning the care of fur with the care of the (human) body. Fur’s status as fashionable dress depended on managing what remained of its animal origin: skin, hair, odour. Perfuming or deodorising fur helped contain that discomfort, making animal matter acceptable within bourgeois society.
By the early twentieth century, perfumes formulated specifically for fur had entered the market. Weil’s Zibeline, launched in 1927 by Weil Fourrures for sable fur addressed a practical problem: replacing damaging ordinary alcohol-based perfumes with alcohol-free formulations. Weil’s range included Zibeline for sable, Hermine for ermine, Chinchilla Royal for chinchilla. Later perfumes also included Weil’s Antilope.
Historical advertisements for Zibeline show that fur perfume was not confined to Paris but appeared in the Belgian fashion press too, including Ariane in 1934. A later Weil advertisement in L’Illustration in 1942 places the perfume bottle alongside fur-bearing animals and a racialised human figure, bringing scent, animal material, and exoticism together. More than marketing a perfume for fur, it gives scent a geography, linking fragrance to distant lands and, ironically, to the extractive conditions through which fur entered luxury markets. Zibeline was sold more as the scent of an imagined Siberia, than of a sable itself.
Maintaining fur was therefore never only a matter of preservation. It involved disciplining animal matter that never fully submitted to human control: to slow its decay, manage its smell, and protecting it from other species. These practices expose the cultural work required to make fur wearable, where questions of hygiene, bodily proximity, class distinction, and the unstable boundary between human and animal converged.
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Archival Sources:
Advertisement for Weil Antilope perfume from an unknown periodical, 1945. Private collection.
Advertising poster for antiseptic fur-cleaning powder “Lavande Ambrée de Bourbon”, c. 1890–1900, Paris. Vliegende Bladen, Ghent University Library, inv. no. BIB.VLBL.HFI.P.006.08.
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