Word: furness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cold Turkey. "About the only sure way to stop this stuff is to set your store up in a nudist colony," said a Seattle superman, by now suspicious of just about any housewife who carries a big handbag, wears full skirts or wraps up in a fur coat on a warm day. In many U.S. cities, market cashiers havealso learned to watch for more elaborate devices for sneaking merchandise past the cash register: improbably distended bras (cheese and caviar), hollowed-out books (chops), a bagful of well-used baby diapers (canned goods), the false-bottom market bag, fake laundry packages...
They spent their money freely, but in unexpected places; they cleaned out all stocks of gabardine from one department store, all the nylon fur from another. They loaded up on lingerie and stockings and perfumes-for the girls back home; for themselves, they bought shirts, shorts and ties-in any color, curiously, except red. A surprising haul was made by Wellington's druggists, for the Red sailors swept the shelves bare of laxatives, and even bought up patent medicine that had been gathering dust for years. At week's end the Russians went back to their ships laden...
...minutes later we ran into Khrushchev in the corridor. Now he was bundled up in his black overcoat with the curly black fur collar and the cylindrical black fur hat. He gave us a grin and a sort of salute. Then, accompanied by a general, he moved on down the hall, as round and jolly a commissar as ever stoked the fires or marshaled the might of international Communism...
...years Oxford scholars have been uneasy about certain mutations in academic plumage. Shortly after World War II, hard-pressed tailors took to making gowns of nylon instead of silk, even trimmed the hoods of bachelors of arts with nylon fur instead of ermine or white-dyed rabbit. Worse yet, many Oxonians were showing up in startling shades of the traditional colors. Reason: in the university's seven centuries, no one had ever specified the precise shades for the various degrees. Around the faculty's high tables in college dining halls, the old guard eyed the robes...
...Clifford and Venables spent a year poking through ancient records and sifting the lore of tailors along High Street. Bound in leather, handwritten on parchment and illustrated with swatches of material, their specifications are stored for the ages in the University Archives. One fiat of the new book: nylon fur is out. Sniffs Gentlemen's Tailor Venables: "Any fur on an academical hood ought to come from an indigenous animal...