Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Apr 19/99) - The North American Fur & Fashion Industry's (NAFFEM) annual exposition gathers together 200 exhibitors and 5,000 buyers from around the world.

"It's North America's most important fur and fashion trade show," says Alan Herscovici, vice-president of the Fur Council of Canada. "It also happens to be the biggest fashion industry commercial show of any type in Canada. It's one of the most important ones, for marketing, in the world."

Herscovici explains that NAFFEM is the show where the buyers, the retail stores, from across North America, and all around the world, go to see the new collection and the new styles, and to place their orders for the coming year.

The event combines fashion-trend shows and seminars over four days, from Wednesday, May 4 to Saturday, May 8.

The popularity of seal skin has been on the rise over the last few years, as has wild fur generally. Also popular because it's some of the best in the world is the Mackenzie mink, the Canadian Martin (sable), and the world-renown lynx from the Western Arctic.

This year, the Canadian Fur Trade Development Institute, which produces and manages the event, is honouring the people of Nunavut as the first furriers.

"There will be a Nunavut booth at the fair with some of the products, some seal products from the North. At our opening press conference we will have the assistant deputy minister for Nunavut (John Hickes, sustainable development), who will be speaking. There will be a tribute to Nunavut at the gala fashion show in the evening, with Inuit musicians, and a drum and dance group."

There is also a special cocktail reception planned for the second evening, in honour of Nunavut.

The first furriers, incidentally, have been affected by the decline in the popularity of furs as a result of animal-rights activism.

This ties in with a new topic on the roster of seminars titled Just the Facts, which is intended to inform industry members -- so that they can better inform the public -- on how to address the damage animal-rights activists have wreaked on the fur industry. (Though to be fair, national economies and weather patterns affect the fur industry as well.)

An expert panel of fur farmers, trappers, biologists and government officials will provide straight talk about responsible practices, animal welfare and conservation issues.

Fur is being dubbed as "a responsible industry and the ultimate ecological clothing."

The Canada Fur Council has produced, in tandem with these industry-specific seminars, a 25-minute video entitled Fur -- The Fabric of a Nation. This has already been distributed to over 1,000 Canadian schools.

There's more good news on the horizon: for the first time ever, 20 stores from mainland China will be attending the exposition.

"And they don't know wild furs. They know farmed mink -- that's what they've been marketing. They don't know Canadian wild furs. They're interested enough to be coming this year," says Herscovici.

"And six major Japanese companies are coming to our fair this year for the first time in many years."

It seems amazing that fashion trends, especially those as far away as China and Japan, can affect the life of trappers in the Canadian North, but there you have it.

"That really shows the potential growth in the industry that's coming up," adds Herscovici. "All that has a market significance in the prices trappers see at the end of the line."