After Mink, What?

The girl with a mink coat was once the most blessed of women, envied by her cloth-covered friends and respected even by headwaiters. Not so any more. As postwar prosperity made it possible for almost anyone to have a mink, almost anyone bought one. Secretaries and shopgirls began to turn up in Hollanderized versions, and though the pelts were sometimes poor and the cut was often sloppy, the fur was undeniably mink. Today mink spills off park benches, stadium bleachers and beauty-parlor coat racks as if it were so much mattress ticking.

The obvious result is a feeling among the smart set that mink has become ordinary. Says one fashion leader: "It's gotten to be nothing more than a seedy status symbol." Sniffs another: "Everybody in kingdom come has one. I never saw so many old sides and ears in my life. Of course, it is becoming to just everybody --even those little old poodles with the jeweled mink collars.''

Some of the chic clique are turning to other furs, running the range from badger to beaver, squirrel to seal, and including such far-out furs as pony, jaguar and zebra; best-dressed Mrs. William Paley passed up racks of floor-length mink coats last week to buy a simple little number in grey squirrel. Currently, the move is to sable. But if it is to be mink, then it must be cut rakishly enough or designed with sufficient casualness to insure its owner protection against being lumped with the common crowd at her heels. Get the "understated mink." cries Harper's Bazaar. For if simply everyone has a plain old mink coat, hardly anyone has a mink-lined raincoat. Or a mink coat modeled after an officer's reefer ($7,800, Bonwit Teller). Or a pure-white double-breasted mink blouse ($2,600, Bonwit Teller). Or a dark ranch mink suit ($2,000, Fredrica Furs). Or a loose-belted polo coat ($4,950, Hattie Carnegie).

But whatever color or cut it takes, and despite the recent wild trend to leopard, mink is still the most popular of furs: last year's retail sales of mink amounted to $306 million, and 85% of all U.S. fur sales. Says Neiman-Marcus Vice President George Liebes, for the defense: "No fur is so flattering. None can be handled so well, none is to be had in so many colors, none can be so dressed up or dressed down, none can be used so many ways in so many fashions. Mink is in. to stay." In other words, all it has lost is status, and most women are apparently content that it is still warm, comfortable and handsome.

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