Word: furs
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...weeks the fur trade had buzzed with talk about the latest thing in mink. "White wonder of the world," said the ads, "white as purest snow." From the Mutation Mink Breeders Association came a batch of engraved cards, with a golden crown as a crest, announcing the arrival of "this superb new fur." In Manhattan last week, at the first fur auction of the new season, it was obvious that "Jasmine," a new white fur, was indeed the new queen of the minks. It sold as high as $155 a pelt, then settled down to around $70 v. about...
...Jasmine was queen of the minks, mink was still king of the furs. In swank shops across the nation, fur departments were jammed with last-minute Christmas shoppers. Some bought bleached otter; others snapped up dyed beaver, nutria or sable. But for most, the goal was a mink. Mink outsells all other furs (world production is about 3,250,000 pelts a year), accounts for an estimated 65% of the dollar volume in the fur business...
...Night. Though some retail prices last week were down a little from last year (about $300 on a $5,000 coat), Utah's Mink Rancher David W. Henderson, president of the National Board of Fur Farm Organizations, thought the market was off to a good start. One fillip came from an unexpected source. Said Henderson, whose beady-eyed little Topaze breeders (see cut) are worth up to $600 apiece: "If anything, the Washington mink scandals helped the market by bringing the idea of mink coats more & more before the public." In Chicago,, the Miller Fur Co. was doing...
Hazards of Fashion. Aside from the hazards of such fads (rebelling designers have threatened to plug such furs as sable and chinchilla), the wild scramble for mutations has confused the public. The real value in a mink coat is the quality of the fur itself and the long hours of skilled workmanship required to make a coat. With the new Jasmine mutation, for example, Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman might pay $4,950 for the skins, $1,800 for the labor.* Rent and other overhead expenses would bring the cost of the coat to $7,300, and Bergdorf...
...might well have objected to all this attention was plain-speaking Charley Russell himself. "In my book," he once told a Montana booster meeting, "a pioneer is a man who comes to a virgin country, traps off all the fur, kills off all the wild meat, cuts down all the trees, grazes off all the grass, plows the roots up, and strings 10 million miles of bob wire. A pioneer destroys things and calls it civilization. I wish to God that this country was just like it was when I first saw it and that none of you folks were...