Enterprise: The Cape Caper

The scavenging genius of the American instinct runs deep: use anything, adapt everything goes the rule, whether it is castles from the Rhine or old British ocean liners. A case in point is Mrs. Florence Barry, 57, owner of a Manhattan thrift shop called Encore. No sooner did she read in the newspaper that the Paris police force was about to discard its famed capes for raglan-sleeved overcoats than she decided that police capes were just the thing for her customers.

Nothing daunted, she hopped aboard the plane for Paris. But it was not so easy. First, she discovered, there was no central purchasing agency. "Each policeman had bought his own cape," she says. And when she approached them directly in her faltering French, most Paris flics simply laughed in her face. "I felt foolish, so I flew right home," confesses Mrs. Barry. But once there, she was met with a barrage of accusations. "Everyone—my husband and my friends—accused me of giving up," she says. And so back she flew to Paris, determined to lick the problem.

First off, she took to the streets, distributing cards printed with her name and hotel address to every policeman she saw. She also made a tour of precinct stations, explaining to all who would listen that she would pay $10 to $15 for each cape delivered to her hotel. When she caught wind of an anti-American rally outside the U.S. embassy, she sensed a windfall. She raced to the scene, handed out her cards—and by evening some 50 flics had marched into the hotel, capes in hand. The concierge collaborated willingly. "Whenever I was out and another batch of capes came in," says Mrs. Barry, "he'd look them over and select the best ones."

In three weeks, she had gathered 100 capes and returned to the U.S.—but not before deputizing two ex-policemen and the head bartender at the Café de la Paix to continue collecting capes, which she is now selling rapidly at her shop for $25 to $50, depending on their condition.

Next, who knows? She is game to go to Africa to buy up amulets from detribalized Africans. Or even pith helmets from retreating British garrisons. Her one question: "Got any contacts?"