AR-News: Sealskin covers a small market

[kymberlie]

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=867ed2ed-6cb0-4277-8b8a-ffafc48add73

Sealskin covers a small market
Designs from Nunavut coming to Montreal fur show

EVA FRIEDE
The Gazette

April 27, 2004

A sealskin bustier will be among the fur garments shown when Montreal's 
annual fur trade show opens Sunday.

Seal is always part of NAFFEM, the North American Fur and Fashion 
Exposition, which is expected to draw 5,000 visitors to Place Bonaventure 
over four days. But it's just a tiny sliver of the market.

The bustier, as well as a jacket inspired by skidoo racers, are part of the 
Nunavut Inuit Collection, said Diane Giroux, a designer who works with the 
Inuit in the North gathering information from their cultural heritage and 
teaching them new fur-working techniques.

The pieces are made of ringed seal from the North, not harp seal from the 
East Coast, where a cull of up to 1 million animals over three years was 
ordered last year.

The increase in the seal hunt, which was not big enough to affect the 
marketplace, only made headlines this spring.

There is an estimated population of 5.2 million harp seals on the East 
Coast, almost triple that of 1970, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

In the North, about 30,000 ringed seals are harvested each year, 10,000 of 
which are sold commercially. The ringed seal population, estimated at 1 
million to 3 million, is harder to count because it's widely distributed, 
said Larry Simpson, senior adviser for fisheries and sealing to the 
government of Nunavut.

The show pieces at NAFFEM are meant mainly for the southern market, to show 
what can be done with seal - "maybe convince some furriers to do something 
with seal themselves," Simpson said.

The seal hunt collapsed in the 1970s in the wake of protests by anti-fur 
activists against the clubbing of baby animals. The U.S. banned imports of 
seal products in 1972, and the European Union followed 10 years later with 
a ban on white pelts from the youngest pups.

There is, however, a large demand for seal products in much of the world, 
said seal agent Michael Consiglio.

Most of the pelts he buys, sells and processes are made into hats for 
Russians. They are produced in Greece, Turkey, China and Russia.

"Turkey does collars and cuffs and little strips on pockets. The Russians 
love it. It's a nice detail,'' said Consiglio, who buys harp seals from the 
East Coast and Cape seals from South Africa. He also supplies some pelts to 
the Inuit.

Last year, he dealt with about 50,000 pelts in total, and doesn't expect 
that number to change this year. There was a shortage of sealskins last 
year, he said, and he also doesn't expect the price - about $100 a pelt - 
to change.

The seal market is tiny, especially when compared with mink. About 35 
million mink are farmed annually, said Alan Herscovici, executive 
vice-president of the Fur Council of Canada, which sponsors the show.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040428/278a06a5/attachment.html