Sheared mink - how to distinguish the original fur from a fake?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

At present, natural mink fur is being processed by dyeing, plucking, and bleaching. However, products for the manufacture of which sheared mink is used are in special demand. Fur coats and hats made of this material take pride of place in the wardrobe of any girl.

What is sheared mink fur?

From year to year, natural fur processing technologies are updated and improved, which allows craftsmen to create new, more original textures. When dressing a mink, furriers most often resort to plucking and shearing methods. In plucked fur, the outer hair is removed, after which only a soft, velvety underfur remains. When processed by shearing, the outer hairs are shortened. As a result, the pile becomes more attractive in appearance, but a little prickly.

Often, craftsmen resort to dressing natural fur, combining it into a single technologypinching and shearing methods. This allows the material to acquire an extremely smooth, velvety texture. To achieve the effect of "velveteen" fur is cut at different levels over the entire surface.

How can a fur coat or a hat acquire patterns? Sheared mink is often amenable to laser processing, which makes it possible to endow surfaces with textured patterns.

Practical material

Products made from natural sheared fur usually have a slightly reduced price compared to mink products, which have an elongated pile. However, this rule does not always apply. So, original designer models that have been processed by applying laser patterns are much more expensive than products made from ordinary fur.

If we talk about how practical a sheared mink coat is in everyday use, then, as practice shows, the material does not last as long as products made from ordinary fur. The reason for this is the use of skins of lower quality, which acquire an attractive appearance precisely due to special processing. In order for a sheared mink coat to please the eye for as long as possible, preference should be given to products from reputable manufacturers who obviously do not use low-quality materials.

How to tell a shorn mink?

Unfortunately, unscrupulous manufacturers have long adopted technologies that allowto ennoble obviously low-quality fur and give it a chic appearance, thereby increasing the cost of products. In addition, processed fur of a rabbit, marmot, beaver, muton, honorik, and various types of artificial material are often given out as a sheared mink. Let's see what you should pay attention to so as not to become a victim of scammers.

Marmot

Outwardly, the fur of mink and marmot is quite similar. However, when evaluating the material to the touch, a completely different texture is observed. Groundhog pile in its natural form has a different length. The prickly but soft sheared mink quickly returns to its original appearance when stroked against the hairs. On the contrary, groundhog fur is not so plastic and starts to shaggy.

Rabbit

Often, under the guise of a sheared mink, the consumer is offered products made from carefully processed rabbit fur. In order not to be mistaken, you need to understand that the pile of the mink is denser. On the contrary, rabbit skins have relatively sparse hairs, with little or no undercoat. It is enough to squeeze the fur in the palm of your hand - and the rabbit hair will become almost impalpable.

Honorick

The animal is an artificially bred derivative of mink and ferret. Honorika fur is used as a good, more affordable alternative to expensive material for the main mass of consumers.

Products in this category differ from natural sheared mink primarily in shade. Honorik's fur is more contrasting. The down here is pronouncedly light, and the hard pile is dark.

Another signattempts to pass one for another - the size of the layers of material that are used to make a fur product. Since the honorik is larger than its ancestors, the segments here will be larger. Naturally, this method of determining a fake is relevant only if the design of the fur coat does not involve sewing from small pieces of fur.

How to identify natural dyed material?

Sheared mink is often processed by dyeing due to the demand for products with unnatural shades. To distinguish a natural dyed mink from the fur of other animals, just pay attention to a few points:

1. Even when dyed, sheared mink has a uniform sheen over the entire area of the product.
2. After processing the fur by shortening the pile, natural mink retains stiff guard hairs. If the latter are not found when stroking the material against the wool, most likely there is an artificial base or the fur of another animal.
3. The underfur of the mink is thick and dense.

In closing

The above methods of disguising fur as a sheared mink are far from the whole list of dangers that lie in wait for a slow buyer. Today, even some fashion houses resort to the use of artificial fur substitutes, the appearance of which is not worse than natural bases. Therefore, the choice of products from sheared mink should be approached especially carefully.