“Fur coat” has become Aspen’s caption every December. Last winter, four different coats were captioned with those two words.
Celebrities flock to Aspen in the second half of December, and every photograph that documents their arrival includes the same caption: fur coat. Curious to find out what kind of coat they were wearing, we scoured coverage from last winter. There was one from Roberto Cavalli from 2000 worn by Kim Kardashian. There was also a $48,000 Gucci shearling coat sans fur. There was a lot of faux fur draped over sweatpants fresh off a private jet. But some of it was just trimming on the hood of a ski jacket.
If you’re not familiar, après-ski translates to “after skiing” and in Aspen refers to whatever you wear after the ski lifts stop running.
Fur Real: The Vintage Fur Coat
Start with fur coats, because despite the headlines, there weren’t many. Where reports mentioned what celebrities were wearing, it was vintage. Kim Kardashian wore a Roberto Cavalli fur coat from 2000 and a Gucci leather and fur coat from 2003, the Tom Ford era, to ring in the New Year. W Magazine reported on Jan. 6, 2026, that she wore mostly vintage pieces throughout the trip.
Hailey Bieber wore what Marie Claire called a chocolate brown mink wrap coat to brunch in Aspen a year earlier. That coat, from Ralph Lauren Fall 1995, predates Bieber’s birth. In other words, vintage is working overtime. Vogue and Elle no longer photograph new fur coats, Gucci stopped selling them in 2017, and shoppers can no longer buy fur at Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom or Saks. That’s according to The New York Times, which reported on the trend in December 2025.
A Sheep in Fox’s Clothing: The Shearling Coat
Fur was banned from the runway during New York Fashion Week in September 2026. The rule didn’t extend to shearling or leather. That exemption explains most things worn by celebrities in Aspen last winter. Shearling is sheepskin that has been tanned with the wool left intact. One side is suede, the other fleece, and designers are crafting shearling jackets and coats to resemble fox or mink. The Times once referred to it as “the non-fur fur of fashion.”
What makes the two materials different is the animal they come from. Shearling comes from animals raised for meat, primarily, according to an online guide from one Greek furrier. Fur comes from animals raised or trapped for their fur primarily. That is where the Fashion Week ban draws the line. The same guide ranks Spanish merino fleece as the best because it grows thick and soft but on a thin skin that keeps coats lighter.
See how convincing shearling can look? In Aspen last season Alix Earle wore Gucci’s animal-print shearling coat. Nylon said the coat cost $48,000 and noted it isn’t real fur because Gucci hasn’t used any since 2017. Now consumers can spend thousands on what looks like a pelt and call it neither fur nor faux fur.
Kate Hudson, whose go-to gray coat in Aspen is faux fur, traded it on Dec. 28 for a patchwork shearling number by Prada, The Zoe Report noted. After Hailey Bieber wore what Marie Claire described as a $15,800 Ferragamo fur coat to dinner in Aspen in January 2025, the designer later told the Times that his house no longer uses fur. Maximilian Davis designs with shearling.
Faux Real: The Faux Fur Coat
FYI, faux fur is the third coat variation to keep in mind. As its name implies, faux fur does not come from an animal. Celebrities arriving in Aspen first last season were stepping off their private jets wearing sweatpants and faux fur coats, reported Who What Wear on Dec. 21, 2025. Sara Sampaio and Shay Mitchell were cited as examples. Sweatpants and a private jet: Aspen’s version of high-low dressing. Teddy coats also fall under this umbrella. Constructed of wool or synthetic material, most teddies don’t contain hide of any kind.
Hood Ornament: The Fur Trim
But sometimes said fur is actually three inches wide. The caption may be referring to fur trim around someone’s head, as in Lauren Sánchez Bezos stepping out of a restaurant wearing a black zip-up jacket with a fur-trimmed hood, per WWD. She paired the jacket with ski pants made of softshell, too. WWD summed up the 2025 festivities in Aspen as fur-trimmed coats, puffers and softshell ski outfits in oat, black and olive.
The Real Deal: A New Mink Coat
Let’s talk about what we never see in the caption. Where can you buy a new fur coat when few of the big names make them anymore? Straight from furriers who specialize in exactly that. Lots of furriers operate out of Kastoria, a northern Greek town whose residents have been crafting coats from fur for generations. One such company, CASIANI, sources skins at auction, then produces the coats in-house. It lists a new mink jacket for around $4,300 and a new full-length mink coat for around $8,900 at regular U.S. prices this November.
Benchmark those prices against Gucci’s, and the math becomes bizarre. The new full-length mink coat retails for less than one-fifth of Gucci’s asking price for a shearling coat photographed as fur last season in Aspen. The imitation cost more than the real fur coat.
Read Between the Linings
If captions always listed materials accurately, none of this would be necessary. They often don’t. Bella Hadid wore what The Zoe Report described as a light-brown fur coat on Dec. 30. Goldie Hawn wore an oversized white fur coat and Mariah Carey wore a belted Valentino Garavani fur coat, according to WWD. Valentino went fur-free in 2022. None of those reports specify what kind of fur it was, or indeed if it was fur at all.
You can probably figure it out just by looking. Check out the front edge of the coat, where it splits when you open it. If you can see a fabric lining, it’s fur or faux fur. If the inside is suede, leather or more fleece, it’s shearling because a shearling coat is one hide with two sides and requires no lining.
A magazine will call them both “fur coats.” This winter, when Aspen photos start hitting newsfeeds, pay attention to what’s on the inside before you believe the headline.
