Last week, when I was returning to New York after spending a lovely holiday with my family, I ran into an old friend at the airport. I hadn't seen him in several years -- more than several, actually (I won't say how many). We haven't spoken since high school. In the process of exchanging the usual, basic data about our lives, we swapped business cards with promises of phone calls and meeting for lunch some time. While handing mine over, I announced that he'd better not be an animal rights fanatic, because I had become the editor of a fur trade publication since I saw him last. He assured me that he was not into animal rights and laughed at the absurdity of it. His following comment -- completely unsolicited -- was: "A lot more people seem to be wearing furs these days."
Then I knew it wasn't just wishful thinking or pro-fur hype or pure retail propaganda designed to boost sales. For the first time in probably five years, a comment about fur to an acquaintance didn't elicit condolences about some nasty tv report or protest, or even a philosophical discussion. Instead, it spurred scorn and dismissal for animal rights and an underlying message that "all that craziness seems to be over now."
Wow, how'd that happen? What a year! It seems like just yesterday when fur retailers were trying to convince disbelieving news reporters that a season of decreased sales was an anomaly due to ridiculously warm weather. And here we are, entering 1996, basking in vigorous results at retail and almost an embarrassment of riches when it comes to fur fashion media coverage.
That's not to say everything is all peaches and cream. The New York market still suffers from some serious problems, like imports, memo business and a bizarre lack of credit-checking facilities. All the gains the trade has made have been hard-won. And nobody can control perhaps the largest factor influencing fur sales: the weather.
Yet, as I look back through my files and the past 50 issues of Fur Age Weekly, I am convinced the fur trade has more to be proud of about 1995 than any other year in the past decade. Perhaps due to a "now or never" attitude, those who were dedicated to this industry made a commitment early on to take aggressive steps to reposition fur as fashion and as a prestigious, luxury item. Through both individual and group efforts, they set out to create the right product, then get the message to consumers through media coverage, advertising and direct mail. Measuring their success is a subjective task, but a pleasant one. This week's Year In Review issue attempts to accomplish it.
But that's not all that happened last year. 1995 was also a year of uncertainty. Who'd have guessed one year ago that Revillon would break with Saks and go its own way? Or that Russia would become such a major player on the international auction scene so quickly? Both of these took me by surprise.
Following successful efforts to promote their product to developing consumer markets overseas, American mink farmers found their government funding not just slashed, but eliminated. The single largest supplier of insurance to the fur trade -- UFG (formerly BRI Coverage Corp.) -- was accused of wrongdoing and declared bankruptcy, leaving furriers confused and irate. At the eleventh hour, North American trappers narrowly avoided the European Union's wild fur ban for another year.
One thing we didn't have to worry about much anymore was animal rights. Having lost their credibility with most news media, activists resorted to more violent and just plain goofy publicity stunts. Rodney Coronado finally went to jail. Ricki Lake apparently regretted her participation with PeTA. The fact that women were ignoring the entire controversy and wearing their furs again made the evening news.
From Fur Age's perspective, 1995 was packed dizzyingly full. We participated in the first Fur Fashion Week as a sponsor, producing the collective printed program. We held a Generation X Design Contest to encourage young fur designers to create with the 20-something age group in mind, and we threw a bash during Fur Fashion Week to show off their winning fashions. Our third annual Folio went full-color and attracted attention for featuring Ivana Trump on its cover. The newspaper and magazine got plugged into the Internet, becoming the world's most widely-read fur publication by receiving almost 5,000 hits per day on Fur Online's Website.
Unfortunately in the midst of these causes for celebration, 1995 was also the year Fur Age mourned the loss of Bob Harrowe, its editor and publisher until 1990. He had been this newspaper's guiding force for 43 years. For me, this signified the passing of one of the last remnants of this industry's collective community spirit, which was so unique and plentiful in his generation.
Retailer of the Year:
Neiman Marcus
Since the Fur Vault brought furs to the masses, no retailer has so influenced the entire fur trade. That might be a sweeping statement, but such is the importance of what Neiman Marcus did this year. Perhaps it is not singularly responsible for spurring the fresh fashion direction that got editors' attention (see Fashion story), but its buying team can take a lot of credit for the year's new look.
"Last January, we called several vendors in the New York market and said that we were interested in fresh new goods. We wanted to see something different this year, a new level of fashion," Neiman's fur buyer Terry Thornton related in an interview with Fur Age last August.
This unusually forceful wakeup call came complete with a message that, if manufacturers didn't come up with the goods, they couldn't count on doing business with this retailer.
Thornton explained, "We feel, along with the whole company, that there is a potential customer for fur, but we have to offer her something she doesn't have. We had been offering her the mundane mink coat, which is great to use fur as a product, but it had no sense of style or freshness... We felt that the business must evolve, or we will lose our customer. This freshness and newness is going to drive our business to a higher level. As an industry, we couldn't have grown if we had stayed where we were. The whole industry needed to move that way."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Neiman Marcus even went a step further, encouraging key suppliers to take part in Fur Fashion Week. As added encouragement, it even faxed letters of congratulations to participants the week before the event. Nice touch.
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