Boohoo called out for selling ‘faux fur’ jumper with real fur

Boohoo has been criticised for selling a jumper that contains real fur, despite it having been advertised as a “faux fur” item.

The “faux fur pom pom jumper” first appeared on the Boohoo website in September 2018, and was described as being 100 per cent acrylic.

The product was spotted by Humane Society International (HSI) as part of an ongoing investigation into wrongly labelled real fur being sold in the UK.

HSI sent the jumper to get tested for real fur by an independent textiles analysis expert, who confirmed the organisation’s suspicions that the item did contain real animal fur.

The animal welfare organisation then submitted a complaint about the product to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which carried out an investigation to find out whether or not the claim could be verified.

The ASA has concluded that the retailer has breached rules concerning “misleading advertising” as the jumper contains animal fur that is believed to be rabbit.

The Boohoo Animal Welfare Policy states that the company is committed to not selling real animal fur.

While the jumper had been checked internally by Boohoo, no further external checks on the product were conducted.

The fashion brand has since withdrawn the product from sale and has stopped placing orders with the external UK-based supplier.

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However, the jumper can still be found on the website with a note that the item is out of stock.

Claire Bass, executive director of HSI UK, has expressed her disapproval over customers being duped into purchasing real fur.

“It’s completely unacceptable that compassionate consumers setting out to buy fake fur are being misled into buying animal fur,” she says.

Miles Lockwood, director of complaints and investigations at ASA, has also spoken about the importance of authentic advertising.

“Consumers should be able to trust the ads they see and hear and they certainly shouldn’t be misled into buying a faux fur product in good conscience only for it to turn out to be from a real animal,” he says. “That’s not just misleading it can also be deeply upsetting.”

The ASA investigation also looked into claims that Zacharia Jewellers was selling pom pom headbands falsely advertised as containing faux fur.

The headbands, which were purchased from China, have been confirmed as containing real fur. Zacharia Jewellers has since removed the product from its website and from Amazon.

Following a request for comment from The Independent, Boohoo provided the following statement:

“The product in question was checked for real fur using our own ‘approved’ tests and procedures by our in-house quality assurance team. The results of the testing showed that real fur was NOT present in the product.

“Following the enquiry made by the Humane Society the item has been removed from sale.

“We uphold our commitment against the sale of real fur in any of our products and continue to investigate the matter internally and with the supplier in question, and we do so as a matter of priority.”