Icelandic furrier promotes sealskin couture

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND — For more than 1,000 years, Icelanders hunted seals, ate the meat, and used the skins for clothing. That is, until international efforts to ban seal hunting stopped Iceland’s seal hunt in its tracks.

The ban, says Reykjavik furrier Eggert Johannsson, was a tragedy.

That’s because when Iceland’s hunters stopped culling seals, the population of North Atlantic seals increased, he says. These seals then ravaged the smaller Icelandic seal population for food — “the herds of Icelandic seals, that used to be part of the farmers’ livelihood, were defenceless, and therefore destroyed.”

“We must not forget that the hunter, the tanner and the furrier have an important role in maintaining the stability of nature.”

From his fur studio and workshop in the heart of Reykjavik, Eggert is doing his part to renew interest in Icelandic seal hunting and promote the use of sealskin and other furs — but he’s still angry about the negative impact that conservation and animal rights groups, such as Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, had on sealing in Iceland.

“We have lost a lot of our culture,” Eggert says, “And I would rather have lost the culture of Greenpeace than that of the Inuit.”

Eggert has visited Newfoundland and Labrador, and, although he’d love to visit Nunavut, he’s never been to Canada’s Eastern Arctic.

Yet Inuit seamstresses would surely appreciate Eggert’s enthusiasm for sealskin and his relationship to each piece of skin. He says he particularly likes sealskin because the skins are large, compared to other animal pelts, such as mink, which can be tiny and need to be pieced together when making garments.

“Each sealskin gives off a new energy,” he says.

Eggert uses this “energy” to inspire his designs, which are elegant, playful, sexy and very wearable. His fur studio is full of wonderful coats, ranging from practical warm sheepskin to lush soft sheared mink. Eggert’s ready-to-wear sealskin garments include vests to be worn when riding Icelandic horses, a red hooded parka, a purple jacket with a pattern in yellow, green and red, and a cool, clingy long dress, cut out in a kind of net.

Colour is everywhere, and, not surprisingly, Eggert is the designer behind dyeing sealskin to new shades, such as ruby-red, emerald and a colour he calls “sahara.”

All cutting and most of the sewing of skins and fur is done by hand upstairs in his workshop. There, two employees, Aslaug Kolbrun Jonsdottir and Gudrun Gudjonsdottir, work on different projects.

Aslaug is painstakingly piecing together a dress to be worn by Miss Iceland in beauty pageant competitions, while Gudrun carefully cuts out the pieces of a coat.

Gudrun, who has been working on and off at Eggert’s workshop for nearly 20 years, says she finds sealskin “heavy” to work with. She loves the soft feel of tanned salmon and whitefish skins, which are also used in Eggert’s coats and trimmings.

Long-time workshop sewer Gudrun Gudjonsdottir holds up a piece of dyed salmon skin which is tanned and made into coats. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Every piece of skin and fur is used — and a tidbit of red salmon skin leather may become a bow or butterfly on a coat.

“As most people who work with nature, I don’t like to see anything wasted,” Eggert says.

Although he has many sealskin garments on display at his studio, most of Eggert’s sealskin designs are made-to-order. It can take up to two years from initial design to completion, and cost as much as $6,000 for a finished piece — the price Eggert says you have to pay for a unique garment.

“People have to pay for what we do. Otherwise, they should go to a dollar store,” he says.

That sealskin garments are, by their very nature, unique is an issue Eggert feels strongly about. He’s against the push towards mass-marketing of sealskin garments, which, he feels, result in shoddy products and disaster for producers.

“Consultants try to unify, rather than strengthening something that is unique,” Eggert says.

There is a market for unique, high-end sealskin garments, he says, although it’s not a huge market. Eggert is the only furrier in Iceland working with sealskin and one of only a handful of others in the Nordic countries. His main competition comes from Greenland.

Eggert would like to see more collaboration between small sealskin designers — and he extends an invitation to sealskin tailors in Nunavut to collaborate on a “Northern Collection,” which could be marketed jointly.