WAY BACK WHEN

I recently watched an old movie circa 1950’s and saw a woman wearing a suit with several fox furs arranged on her shoulders with the animals’ heads and tails still intact and hanging from their dried dead bodies and I had to laugh at how we women were such idiots. That was the current fashion and most women aspired to achieve that look.

As I watched the black and white movie, I realized that a young person today watching the same thing would probably be horrified to see those dead creatures worn today. Such furs were in style, I have no idea why, and yet I wanted to wear them too, ugly as they were.  Fur coats and fur pieces were part of our culture then. The ultimate symbol of success then was a mink or sable coat, usually worn by glamorous actress’s or wives of wealthy men.

At our tenth high school reunion held in July of 1958, one of my class mates came wearing a mink stole. I think she expected her fellow grads to be jealous. We weren’t, after all it was extremely hot and the rest of us were in fashionable summer clothing.

There were some young women from wealth and society who deigned such trappings. I remember reading of one who received a mink stole for Christmas from her parents. Not being a fashionable person, this young married woman put an ad in the newspaper offering to trade her mink for a new saddle. Another daughter of wealth not interested in furs or designer clothing traded or sold her expensive clothes to fellow college students, who were totally excited to share in the booty. The clothing which was not suitable to wear in a classroom environment had been gifted to her by her mother, Nancy Reagan. (I was told this many years ago by one of her college classmates)