Cold Storage

Natural fur suffers most in summer, in the wardrobe: heat and damp dry out the skin and make the hair break and shed. Cold storage means keeping pieces over the warm season in controlled temperature and humidity, so the natural oils in the skin don't evaporate and the hair stays supple.

Controlled cold slows the ageing of the material: at low temperatures the activity within the skin drops, and so does its degradation. The key point is that this is not freezing — cold that is too dry, or sub-zero temperatures, expand and contract the hair from one season to the next and can break it; that is why the right condition is cold, not frozen, with humidity kept in balance.