Real fur or faux: how to tell them apart

Faux furs have come a long way. Some imitate mink or fox well, to the point that a quick glance no longer settles it. Telling the two apart is still simple once you know where to look. Four checks are enough in the great majority of cases, and the first is the most reliable.

1. Part the hair and look at the base

This is the decisive test. Take a lock between two fingers and part it to expose the base.

• Real fur: you see pelt. Tanned skin, supple, pale in tone, whitish or beige, with no regular pattern. The hairs come out of it irregularly, in small groups.
• Faux fur: you see a textile backing. A weave or a knit, with a regular mesh and a repeating pattern. The fibres are set into it in rows.

On a lined piece, look for somewhere the backing is accessible: a hem, an inside seam, the underside of a pocket, the edge of a hood.

2. Examine the tips of the hairs

Pick out a few long hairs by eye and look at their ends, in good light.

An animal hair tapers gradually towards its end. It finishes in a fine point, and the points are not all at the same height: a natural fur mixes hairs of different lengths.

A synthetic fibre keeps the same diameter along its whole length. It ends in a clean cut, sometimes slightly thickened. The ends are often aligned, which gives that too-regular surface, as if it had been trimmed.

This test works well on long hair, less well on flat-pile furs where the tips are hard to isolate.

3. Behaviour in a flame

This test is reliable, but it destroys what it tests. Never do it on a piece you want to keep, on a garment that is not yours, or on an item in a shop. It means taking two or three hairs, no more, from a hidden area, holding them with metal tweezers over a non-flammable container, well away from the garment itself.

• Animal hair: it burns like human hair. It curls up, gives off a smell of burnt horn or hair, and leaves a grey ash that crumbles between the fingers.
• Synthetic fibre: it melts rather than burns. It shrinks back into a small hard bead at the end, gives off a smell of hot plastic, and the residue stays hard once cool.

In practice this test mainly serves to settle a doubt about an older piece nobody knows anything about and whose label is gone. The first two checks are almost always enough.

4. The way it hangs and moves

Put the piece on a hanger or hold it at arm's length, then shake it lightly.

Real fur moves in locks. The hairs separate, overlap, fall back at different speeds and return to their place. Run your hand against the pile: the hair lifts, then settles back down on its own.

Faux fur moves as one block. The movement is stiffer and stops all at once. Hair lifted against the pile often stays down or takes time to come back. Many synthetics also build up static, which makes the fibres stick to each other or to clothing.

Two secondary clues

How supple the backing is

Fold a panel of the piece. Tanned pelt folds with a soft resistance and briefly keeps the mark of the fold. A textile backing folds like fabric, with no particular resistance.

Variation in the material

Animal skin is not uniform. Density, length and sometimes shade change depending on which part of the body the skin came from. Faux fur is produced in continuous widths: it is identical from one end to the other. Perfect regularity over a large area is a signal.

What about price?

Price is a weak clue, to be handled with care. It is true that a new piece in real fur is rarely priced at the level of a mass-market synthetic. But the second-hand market, estate sales and older pieces scramble that marker completely. There are cheap real furs, and high-end synthetics sold dear. Never conclude on price alone: check the base of the hair.

What proves nothing

• Softness. Some modern fibres are softer than rabbit.
• Shine. It is easily obtained in synthetics.
• Weight. It depends on the cut, the lining and the surface, more than on the nature of the hair.
• The brand or the presentation. Careful packaging says nothing about the material.

The surest method is still the label

On a new item sold in the European Union, the rules require the seller to inform the buyer that an animal material is present. The label is therefore the first place to look, before any hands-on test. We go into this in our article on what the label on a fur garment says.

The tests described here come into their own on a piece that was inherited, bought second-hand, or has had its labelling removed. Once the material is identified, our notes by material help work out which fur it is, and the care and passing on page sets out what it needs.