:: BLUE RINSE STATEMENT ::

"Blue Rinse is one of Leeds few independent retailers that sell mostly vintage and secondhand items including secondhand faux fur coats. We never intentionally sell real animal fur although it seems that a small number of items have slipped through in this case.

The offending items were immediately removed from the shop after reading this article. We hope this move shows our commitment to ethical issues and hope to prove that we never knowingly sell items that will cause offence.

The said items were with a rail of faux fur products that we have been selling and were labelled as fux fur as that is what we believed them to be. The way our business works is by buying a bulk lot of one particular item, in this case secondhand used faux fur coats, and it is sometimes possible that a number of slightly different products can slip through. While we regret that this has happened we hope to make it clear that his kind of incident is accidental and we do not encourage animal cruelty.

While I do not know who posted this article or provided the information, I am slightly disappointed that we were not informed immediately of this incident. Whoever visited the shop to do the research obviously knows a lot more about real fur than we do and can better tell the difference between real and fake than we can, so it could've been helpful for all for us to be informed straight away that we were selling animal fur. In that case, the items could have been removed much earlier to avoid this situation and also maybe even given us a bit of advice for the future to help us avoid any similar items passing through into our shop.

Despite the comments about us selling fascist white power badges in the past not being relevant to the dialogue about animal fur I would like to give a balanced view seen as though it has been mentioned. For similar reasons as to how the fur itmes slipped through, we bought a batch of about 5000 old patches in which we found a small number of the white power badge in and amongst. We went through this batch thoroughly to remove the items that may have caused offence but clearly a small number were missed by mistake.

I hope the reader can understand that while we do our very best to ensure we do not sell items intentionally that will cause offence, we are at the end of the day human and sometimes mistakes like this do happen. All we can do is apologise for these and act quickly, as we have done with the removal of the fur items and in return ask that we are consulted initially if somebody takes offence to something we sell so it can be dealt with straight away rather causing more offence to others.

As I have said, we are one of few remaining independent shops in Leeds with an independent voice so it does bother us a lot when we read things like this. I hope this reply has gone a long way to show we do care about a lot of issues and do make a conscious effort to do business ethically.

Dominic
Blue Rinse"


:: HARVEY NICHOLS UPDATE ::
At the start of this Season one of our store detectives found a number of mink fur items on sale in Harvey Nichols, Leeds, which contradicted their nationwide fur-free policy issued in 2005. Following this being raised with HN, the items were removed. A month later, we have been keeping an eye on their stock coming in for this Autumn/Winter season and are pleased to announce that no real fur is on sale.


***ACTION***
Please politelty contact these 2 fur shops and voice your disgust at their support for animal abuse. This season the fur industry are pushing the sales or animal pelts to their limits as actions against the fur trade are happening globally, including farm raids from Russia to America:

Accent Clothing,
11-20 Queens Arcade,
Briggate,
Leeds,
West Yorkshire
LS1 6LF
Tel: 0113 234 6767
Fax: 0113 234 1103
 info@accentclothing.com
TRIMMED COATS: 1 coyote, 6 rabbit, 1 fox and 2 raccoon

Martin Schneider (Joint MD) -  martin@accentclothing.com
Louise Chantelle Schneider (Joint MD) -  louise@accentclothing.com
Steven Hakin aka "Shakey" -  steve@accentclothing.com
Faz Patel (Buyer) -  faz@accentclothing.com
Vicky Schneider (Kidswear Manager) -  vicky@accentclothing.com
Karen Nolan (Director - Accent Ladies) -  karen@accentclothing.com
Mary Anne Schneider (Office Administrator) -  mary@accentclothing.com
Jeremy King (Web Administrator) -  jeremy@accentclothing.com
Rhonda Richards (Assistant Web Administrator) -  rhonda@accentclothing.com

==============

Mabel James
4-6 Cross Street,
Wakefield,
West Yorkshire,
WF1 3BW
Tel: 01924 291711

Fox trimmed coats


DISCLAIMER:

PLEASE REMAIN POLITE AND INFORMATIVE. WE DON'T ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO BREAK THE LAW