Modern Living: The Year for Fur

Time was when a woman expected to wait until ripe middle age before she was presented with a mink coat—if she got one at all. "Today," says Sam Mellon, manager of Chicago's Evans Furs, "they're buying them at 19 or 20." One of the reasons is that mink coats, formerly the badge of the successful matron (or mistress), have succumbed to the youth-oriented trend in fashion. Coats are now short, shaped to the body and sometimes come pieced together to create checks, stripes and herringbone patterns.

Equally to the point, mink is selling at an alltime low. At the latest auctions, there was a surplus of 3,000,000 pelts; consequently, prices are down anywhere from 10% to 25%. Coats now cost as little as $800, and mink for the working girl is fast becoming a possibility. So great is the surplus that Best & Co. is offering mink coats for little girls beginning at size 3, Mark Cross is selling mink-lined raincoats for men, and Manhattan Furrier Georges Kaplan is even proposing that mink be used for wall-to-wall carpeting at $95 per square foot.

Status seekers are turning to sable still beyond the reach of working girls' although it too has dropped in price. A prime Russian crown sable coat cost $40,000 five years ago; today it sells for $25,000 to $30,000. As a result wealthy women this year are buying sable and not just for evening. Predicts Anna Potok, president of Manhattan's Maximilian: "Businesswomen will soon be wearing sable to the office—successful women, of course."