The Latest1, Thing

For 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 $20 for darker, standard pelts.

If 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.

$50 a 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 a booming business renting out mink coats at $50 a night. Said a harried salesman in Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman: "You'd think we were giving the stuff away, the way people are flocking in."

But for all the good news from auction rooms and retail stores, minkmen have had their troubles. With feed prices high and markets erratic, more than 2,000 ranchers (U.S. total: 6,500) went out of business in the past year. With coat manufacturers, a big complaint is the 20% luxury tax, which puts prices just out of reach of a big market.

Pelts & Problems. The biggest headache in the industry is self-induced: the constant scramble for new mutations among the ranchers and their minks. Time was when a woman would go into a shop and simply ask for mink; now she asks for such varieties as Black Diamond, Topaze (a golden brown) or Royal Pastel (a honey beige). As each new mutation hits the market, as in the case of white Jasmine last week, it is ballyhooed throughout the trade. Result: within a year it is more plentiful, and prices skid.

Silverblu mink, the first commercially successful mutation, brought as much as $260 a pelt ten years ago. Now it is down to about $30. Sapphire, new two years ago, sold for as much as $110 when it first hit the market. Now, with production up from 30,000 to some 200,000 pelts in 1952, it averages about $42.

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's would sell it for $12,000 plus tax.

But most mink-hunting women have little idea of how or where the coats come from. At a mink ranch not long ago, a woman visitor asked: "How many times a year do you pelt the animals?" Answered the scornful rancher, deadpan: "Well, we used to pelt twice a year, but it was hard on the minks, so we cut it down to once."

-A full-length mink coat takes up to 80 carefully matched and graded pelts. Each skin is sliced diagonally into dozens of strips, less than a quarter of an inch wide. Then the strips are sewn back together to form a two-inch-wide piece of fur equal to the length of the coat. These long swatches of fur, in turn, are sewn together to make the coat.

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