In Manhattan: Mink Is No Four-Letter Word

"I'm not sure I love it," a woman says I in the petulant monotone of the Total Shopper, her eyes two emerald-rimmed pinpoints inside a huge cloud of cherry fox. She is definitely post-mink. Her personality calls for skunk, or perhaps tree sloth (to match her elaborate false fingernails), but she settles on a coat with pelts worked in next year's pattern, a sort of scallop effect resembling a Queen Anne façade. In case she ever sets foot outdoors, she buys a coyote ski jacket. She seems sorry not to have spent more than $8,000. Her husband, waiting at one of the glass-topped tables along the edge of the room, appears only incidentally interested, knocking the ash off his cigar as he signs the order.

A fur coat cannot be driven or deducted. It is not an investment object, such as a rare book or print. It cannot be insured at true replacement value. It is likely to be stolen if the owner lets it out of her sight. Checkrooms refuse responsibility. Passers-by mutter about cruelty to animals and starving Cambodians.

Why, then, is Michael Forrest, New York furrier, doing $745,000 worth of business during his annual, invitation only, sale to private customers? The reasons offered by the crowd of fiercely concentrating women pirouetting before the mirrors at the end of the showroom sound unconvincing: "It will cost more next year." "I can wear it to the grocery store." "It's young-looking." Also, "sporty" and "basic." (Down coats, by contrast, were rejected because they "make me look like my daughter.")

The objective reporter is there simply to record a scene Toulouse-Lautrec would have loved: all the basic human themes in full display—vanity, lust, decadence, hope, pride, grace, rare flashes of transcendence. Feeling fat, frayed and fortyish, the reporter is placed inside a full-length Black Willow mink coat. She becomes tall, thin, "interesting" (instead of "past her prime") and, best of all, totally invulnerable. The cost is $6,950, marked down from $10,000 by Forrest, retailing for $20,000 and up. Suddenly, $6,950 doesn't seem unreasonable—considering that life is short, etc. Considering too that fur prices have doubled in the past ten years, pushed up by increasing European demand and a 20% increase in sales in the U.S. last year alone. Even so, last year's inventory must be sold to make room for next year's styles. Gone are the classy days of choosing pelts over tea, fitting a canvas pattern. "We need to have coats in stock now," says Forrest. "It's impulse buying."

The impulse may be part of the furless human condition. Actual buying depends on money (full payment before the coat leaves the premises), trust (as in "If Mike says it's good, it is good"), a certain amount of pro forma chat about male vs. female skins and "this year's shoulders." But when the right coat is produced the transformation of the female customer is immediate and complete. A woman who does not achieve incandescence is wearing the wrong coat—or is just spoiled.