Word: furness
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Mind you, the fashionistas are not draping their pages with the type of fur your granny wore. Designers have decided that since luxury is this season's watchword, fur is a staple for everything from evening wear to accessories. "I look at fur today as I look at a fabric," says Valentino. "There is no difference. I use tiny borders of mink as a ruffle in my wool suitings." From trim, fur has migrated to sportswear. Versace has a mink-lined biker boot, Prada has a mink vest, Fendi and others have fur skirts, Michael Kors has silver...
...whether this flurry of furriness will revive what has been a dwindling industry. In 1988 there were more than 1,000 mink farms in the U.S. Last year there were about half that number. While some of this is consolidation, Evans Inc., the retailer considered a bellwether of the fur industry, has lost money in seven of the past 10 years. And its share price, which hit $13 in 1987, was still less than a dollar last month...
...fur industry will admit that animal-rights activists have affected sales, but all will acknowledge that fur has not been getting great press until recently. It's not just the colorful, celebrity-studded campaign from the anti-fur folks; it's the vague sensibility that a big plush fur on anyone born after 1930 either is the height of '80s ostentation or smacks of trying too hard--what some people call the DKAA (Donna Karan for Administrative Assistants) look. "Until two years ago," says Sandy Parker, the industry's eminence grise and the publisher of a fur newsletter, Sandy Parker...
...makes sense that the solution to the image problem came from the biggest fur producer in the world: Saga Furs of Scandinavia, the joint marketing and public relations organization of the fur farmers of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Scandinavia provides more than half the world's fur pelts. Ten years ago, Saga opened its International Design Center. Since then it has been inviting established designers as well as hot young ones to an all-expenses-paid five-day getaway at its turn-of-the-century thatched mansion in the green hills and yellow fields of Sandbjerg, north of Copenhagen...
...inspire them, Saga developed techniques to combine different fur types and colors, as well as to dye, print, shave and twist fur and to treat it so that it can endure dry cleaning. It also helped designers get over any fur hang-ups with an education program. One of Saga's greatest successes has been to create fur that is lighter and thinner. It has made a fox-fur jacket that weighs less than a pound. And if there is one thing fashion people like, it's thin...