Flash back to 1995, when the fashion tide was turning against fur. Supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington were appearing nude on billboards to show their anti-fur sentiments. Women who wore fur — on fashion runways and elsewhere — risked being splattered with red paint by animal rights activists, who also could be counted on to scream at the occasional fur-cladpasserby on city streets.

But that was then. Pick up any fashion magazine today and the pages are full of photo spreads extolling fur as one of the must- have accessories for fall. Lucky magazine names the fur stole one of its three chic looks for the season. Harper’s Bazaar declares chunky knit scarves out and fur scarves in. Nationally, fur sales were up 7.5 percent from 2002 to 2003, according to the industry trade group the Fur Information Council of America.

On sale locally

Many Bay Area retailers are displaying fur clothing in their windows. Brisbane-based Bebe is showing dyed rabbit fur in a plethora of colors, from a teal rabbit capelet to a lavender rabbit fur handbag to detachable pink rabbit fur collars.

Nine West has in its stores a $219 rabbit fur coat in mottled tan and cream or cocoa and cream. Ann Taylor is carrying a brown rabbit keyhole scarf for $99. Nordstrom is selling $164 rabbit-fur stoles in a number of colors, including robin’s-egg blue, as well as $78 faux- furcapelets and $649 chinchilla and rabbit ponchos “All the major designers are using fur,” says Barbara Beccio, head of the fashion department at the Art Institute of California in San Francisco. “I was going through magazines, and there are so many pages with fur coats, accessories, trims, handbags. Apparently it’s back.”

And the trend isn’t in full-length mink coats, although they’re getting their share of magazine ink, says Los Angeles-based fur- industry spokesman Keith Kaplan.

“More than an outerwear necessity, fur has becomea fashion item,” he says. “The weather up in the Bay Area doesn’t dictate the kind of need for fur that the weather in New York and Chicago does. Here you’ll see more of the sheared furs, more of the stoles, capelets, boleros to be worn with either an evening gown or even with jeans, little pieces that work for that 55-degree evening.”

Beccio, an East Coast native who now lives in Emeryville, says she can’t imagine fur coats coming back into fashion, especially in our mild clime.

“What would probably catch on is little ponchos or handbags or scarves,” she says. “That I could see catching on here, or maybe lightweight rabbit fur clothing.”

Where’s the protest?

You may be wondering, “When did fur get so noncontroversial?”

It did, and it didn’t.

The supermodel crowd — even ones who got naked for those “I’d rather…” billboards –largely have changed their minds and are modeling fur on the runways. You may have heard that model Cindy Crawford reneged on her fur-free status when she signed on to model fur coats last month. She was never actually affiliated with the anti- fur movement, although she also didn’t make a big stink about it when her image was appropriated by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The protests, such as the ones in San Francisco’s Union Square, have been toned down. Earlier in the decade, protesters from the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade-San Francisco, spent many a weekend blocking the doors of Neiman Marcus.

Those tactics were abandoned when three protesters were sentenced to house arrest for six months, animal-rights activist Anita Carswell says.

“The real lockdown ethos changed to ‘Let’s try to get Neiman Marcus customers on our side,’ a more low-key approach,” she says.

Carswell, the volunteer coordinator at Mill Valley-based In Defense of Animals, still protests in Union Square from 2 to 4 p.m. Sundays, armed with photographs of grotesquely mangled foxes and other animals. Carswell’s anguish over the death of the minks, foxes, chinchillas, rabbits and other fur-bearing animals is genuine, and she says she’s committed to sticking with the fur issue until fur is no longer sold.

“It’s an incredible amount of suffering for something so frivolous,” she says. “It’s just the height of selfishness.” But if it seems like there are fewer protesters than you remember from past years, that’s true, she says.

“About five years ago, a lot of the animal-rights movement people figured fur is dead and moved on to other issues,” she says. At the weekly San Francisco protest, she says, “we’ve made up for less people with more signage. It looks like a lot more people.”

Beccio says she remembers furious anti-fur protests, but isn’t sure that the current crop of fur consumers do.

“It’s a different generation that’s shopping now from the last time that fur was really big,” she says. “Most of the people who are buying fur are under 40. It’s a different customer that has been coming of age since the last time there was major opposition to (fur).”