Fur Flies Again

Not too long ago, the furrier was one of U.S. retailing's most endangered species. Badgered by conservationists, women began passing up their cherished minks, muskrats and marmots, settling instead for fake furs--or none at all. Then came the recession, and buyers began to balk at purchasing coats--no matter what they were made of--that had three-and four-figure price tags. Fur sales in specialty shops and department stores across the U.S. plunged, and many firms went out of business altogether. In just two years, nearly half of the 2,000 fur wholesalers and suppliers clustered in Manhattan's garment district, the center of the U.S. fur trade, closed up shop or merged with other furriers.

Now furs, and their dealers, are coming back. Industry-wide sales for 1975 are expected to reach their highest level (about $525 million) since the postwar boom 25 years ago. Fur sales have grown more dramatically this year than sales of any other kind of outerwear, and still astonished dealers are barely able to meet demand. Says Beverly Hills Furrier Mac Dicker: "It's unreal. I've been in the business for 30 years and never seen anything like it."

Greater Sin. Why is the fur industry coming back? For one thing, foreign demand for American furs has increased, largely because the long decline of the U.S. dollar has made them cheaper and thus more attractive abroad. At home the fur revival partly reflects new developments on the price and environmental fronts. The rise in petroleum prices has increased the cost of fake furs, many of which are based on petrochemicals; the retail price of a full-length fake "mink," now about $300, has risen about 20% since 1972 (but of course still costs much less than the real ranch mink, which retails for about $5,000). Rising concern about industrial pollution has enabled many ecology-minded buyers to rationalize that the purchase of a fake fur made with chemicals produced in a pollution-prone plant may be a greater environmental sin than buying the real thing.

The main factor in the fur boom is the new vitality and versatility of the fur industry itself. Says Jess Chernak, executive vice president of the American Fur Industry, the furriers' Manhattan-based promotional organization: "We changed what had been a conservative custom trade into a high-volume industry geared to young people and fresh styling."

Skillfully exploiting the national nostalgia kick, furriers have promoted new interest in such long-haired favor--, sites of the 1920s and 1930s as lynx, raccoon and fox.

No longer just heavy rugs, furs now come in lighter weights, often in combination with leather, with removable foul-weather covers, and in a rainbow of nonnatural colors. Some new items: a burgundy-colored opossum jacket selling briskly in Manhattan stores for $600; Designer Calvin Klein's $3,000 celery-green kimono-style mink jacket at top department stores around the country. Especially popular are inexpensive jackets priced as low as $70, made of sewn-to-gether "plates"--fragments of paws, underbellies, and other less-than-prime skins.

While the industry is promoting furs as a bargain and stressing the fact that its prices have risen less sharply than other luxury goods, sales have also been brisk among such top-of-the-line items as $10,000 chinchillas and $25,000 sables. Says Jerome McCarthy, owner of Chicago's tony Thomas E. McElroy Co.: "For a while [the rich] weren't showing their wealth, but now they're indulging themselves." So, too, is the credit-card set, which today includes an ever growing number of liberated women earning their own incomes. As one Manhattan fur department saleswoman quips: "Master Charge is replacing the sugar daddy."

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