Vogue’s The Great Fur Caravan as today’s interpretation

Some things are timeless, immortal even. Some fashion staples create history and continue to inspire people over and over again after decades. This time the history was made by Vogue magazine in 1966. And this iconic photoshoot, called The Great Fur Caravan, inspired our Fur Vision 23 collection. Let’s have a closer look…

The Great Fur Caravan was a fashion adventure, a fantasy, and a love story where a girl travels first class in her fabulous furs in the middle of nowhere, to a secret show country of Japan. There she explores the magic of the country and eventually falls in love with a Japanese stranger.

The story may not make much sense, it’s dreamy and fantastic, but it did make history in many ways. The story was photographed by legendary photographer Richard Avedon, and the girl was Veruschka, the supermodel of the time and the first German supermodel.

It was the winter 1966 when the Vogue team travelled to Japan for five weeks, bringing with them fifteen trunks of clothes all the way to the mountains covered with snow. The whole 26 pages editorial was dedicated to the beauty of furs, and you can easily see this looking at the photos.

The editorial is often credited to Diana Vreeland, Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at the time and, who often liked to spoil her readers with elaborate content. However, the editor was Polly Mellen, and this was one of her first assignments for Vogue costing, based on rumors, USD 1 million. This amount of money today would be equal to USD 7 million!

 

 

The Great Fur Caravan brought inspiration

Looking back at our history, Saga Furs graced the pages of Vogue magazine in the 1960s more than once. And obviously this helped to place the company in the spotlight of fashion, attracting attention from the best in the industry, including names like Christian Dior.

In this year’s Fur Vision collection, it was time travel back in time and take inspiration from this iconic photoshoot. While you look through the collection and samples you can easily see also other source of inspiration which come from the nature – water, stone and wood to be precise. But the more you know about The Great Fur Caravan and the more you examine the looks and photos from the editorial the more similarities you can find.

Frida Barfod, a milliner and headwear designer, was inspired by Japanese parasol which eventually helped her to create a hat for Fur Vision 23 collection. Søren Bach was inspired by a photo with a peal in girls’ ear. A small detail, which was turned into a hand-dyed and hand-cut sample made of either fox or mink fur.

You can also see a sample with a technique inspired by Kintsugi art.  It is a Japanese art where broken pottery is repaired with gold. Kintsugi is also known as a metaphor for embracing your flaws and imperfections. You can also see samples where fur is combined with metal, reminding us of Samurai era, but looking at the same time so modern and glamorous.

We hope you enjoy our Fur Vision 23 collection and find lots of inspiration in it!