>I don’t think I know any who would admit to buying fur these days. The whole fur trade animal mistreatment/massacre is apparently on an entirely different level than that of our animal food sources, or perhaps PETA just has a more accomplished track record in terms of their advertising dollars in admonishing that direction.
However, there is an area of fur that is decidedly more debatable than simply snubbing Park Ave floor length mink coats, and this is, the fur hand me down.
Fur has two purposes, fashion and function. My grandmother was a 60’s and 70’s designer in chilly Chicago, namely of coats for men and women. Having fled a post-war Communist Poland (after returning home from being put to work for the Nazi’s) you can imagine that she wouldn’t have minded putting fur into her creations. Fur meant warmth, and status. Two things Poland had very little of.
Status was, and still is, so tied to fur, my mother has a cedar closet in our basement to this day of coats that will die there. One particular sable coat she owned was treated, admired, as an investment, and sold as such—as valuable and tradable as real estate or fine jewelry.
One year, returning home from living abroad with a newly minted mindfulness, disgusted by the furs I owned (hand-me-downs from the aforementioned cedar closet,) I listed them on eBay. Only one was a particular loss: a vintage 60’s tweed capelet with a magnificent fox collar. Babcia’s creation for the Gold Coast’s luxe fashion house Burdi. It was the sort of item one would imagine Marilyn Monroe wearing to attend an event honoring Kennedy: dramatic, yet inescapably classic. That was a painful detachment—that step toward consciousness, hurt like a m’f’er. I shipped the tear stained box and paid my mortgage with the proceeds.
However these days, as aware we all cheerfully claim to be, I still see fur on every frigid city block. Just this week, I saw two of my closest girlfriends wearing fur.
One was hosting a private birthday party at a downtown, posh yet of course nonchalant, exclusive club for the creative scene. It was a short, fitted number—it looked to be very modern, as though it could have come directly from a Wooster shop window.
“Wow, this is gorgeous.” I cooed. Touching its exquisite softness—what was it? Fine mink? Well laid and dyed rabbit fur? How the heck would one know these things, as one does not, in the course of the average Manhattan day, reach out and pick up furry animals.
“It’s my mom’s from the 70’s.” She explained. And truly, I mean—COULD that go to waste? It was a seductive and luxurious jacket. A signature piece with sentimental value, from London in the 70’s to New York in the new millennium, what could be sexier than that?
The other friend lives in Vermont, and her fur hat, like a white snowball gracing her forehead was used not only for its cuteness, but for warmth’s sake.
“It’s my grandma’s. And I need it in Vermont, man! It’s cold!”
Form or function, elucidations are offered in all instances when fur is concerned. This much we know.
I asked Vermont friend if she thought that wearing hand me down fur was acceptable behavior.
“Absolutely, otherwise you are only disrespecting the energy of the animal even more—leaving its pelt unused in some dusty box somewhere.”
And I, even in my post India awakening into self righteousness, have a confession. I wear a Postcard fox fur lined jacket given to me by my father a few years ago at Christmas. In fact, my sister and I received matching ones, which only led us to speculation about our items perhaps having fallen off the back of trucks. (Clients came to pay my father in goods around the holiday season and there always seemed to be one or two opulent items that seemed a bit out of place.) Whether that was the case with this coat, people have cars that cost less than its retail value. It’s a beautiful, lavish gift.
I adore it. It’s glamorous yet casual and completely practical. It encompasses everything I need as a woman in a daily New York City winter day.
Now, this is not the Park Avenue mink. This is not the mink coat for the woman who doesn’t even NEED a mink coat. (Um, her well heeled legs hardly EVER walk a city block, so why would it matter how cozy they are kept?)
What about fur for the woman who wants to ride a bike because it’s cheaper/faster/environmentally friendlier/healthier/sexier/fun-er way to get around town, but needs the best layering she can find? What about not disappointing your Dad every time he says, “my darling, where is that coat I got you for Christmas? If you’re shivering, why don’t you wear that?”
And let’s be honest. North Face has yet to come up with ANYTHING remotely fashionable. That puffy sleeping bag thing we all now own will only do for date night if you are walking to the grocery store and back and you’ve been with your guy, like, minimum 6 months. I already wear countess layers of tights, socks, undergarments, etc… is it so much to ask to be allowed one small little fur collar, that I swear to God I didn’t even buy myself but can’t quite bring myself to get rid of?
And yet this coat could well be last vestige of inauthenticity to my being. (That statement may seem a bit dramatic but this is glamour we’re talking after all.)
I wear the coat around town, but I will not wear it to my yoga school. I will wear the ugly long sleeping bag coat, or three other layers of thinner coats, but I will go to yoga in the morning in something else, come home and wear the Postcard jacket the rest of the day. This is how ashamed I am of it in front of those whom I respect (and although it is very unyogic to do so,) those who may judge. Those who would look at the fox collar and think, “wow, I really had a good opinion of Margaret, until…”
The moral mare’s nest of wearing the Postcard jacket causes me such agita that this may be its last season. From here on out I will tell my father not to bring me gifts bearing fur.
But the question still stands—what about the others, the hand me downs? Pieces styling glories of former decades. Would it be insolent to incinerate our ancestors’ fluff? Or does wearing fur of any sort, recycled or otherwise, send the message that it is acceptable and therefore we should agree on an across the board moratorium to indicate, “yo… enough.” ? Do average men even care about fur or have any opinion whatsoever (other than from a profit perspective) or is this a movement that need only be driven by women?
I’m not sure. I do think the Postcard jacket is like a tired relationship. You see the end approaching, but you aren’t quite ready to let go just yet, so for now, let’s just all keep our eyes and mouths shut and have a little more romping and rolling together while we can.
