New York, NY -- Mark Montano is maybe the last kind of designer you'd imagine working with fur. His retail store is a fashion landmark for more than ten years on Ninth Street near Avenue A, the epitome of unpretentious, East Village whimsy. He claims as his muse Pippi Longstocking, a character from a children's book, because of her devil-may-care attitude. And, though he feels lucky to have it, he describes a fashion career as "silly." He deadpans, "Nobody's life is being saved by a pair of jeweled pants."

Yet, after following his vision, designing only for his store for nine years, Montano debuted his first major catwalk collection in 1998. Last year he added fur accessories to his wholesale ready-to-wear offering, and he has just premiered his first fur garment collection in his February 6 show for Fall.

"Last year, people didn't really expect me to do the fur accessories," Montano admits. "But I've always loved faux fur, so why not do the real thing? It gave me the option to be playful with colors but still more luxurious. The reaction was good. And it helped people take me more seriously as a designer."

Say what? It wasn't so long ago that fur would offer the opposite of credibility to a hip, downtown designer.

But Montano explains, "Fur is expensive. Young designers don't just do fur so easily. And it's not that easy for young designers to be taken seriously today, because the industry perceives you as maybe not sticking around for very long. They want to see if you will still be around in a few years."

A look inside his retail store, a showcase for his style, reveals a lighthearted, colorful approach to fashion that wouldn't exactly suit the stereotypical fur consumer: plaid caps; Chinese slides decorated with flowers; brocade pant suits with jackets reminiscent of Sergeant Pepper; stiff satiny skirts dotted with crystals and overlaid with lace, and teal blue feathered tiaras. Prices range from $125 to $1,000. Very East Village, not Ladies Who Lunch.

So how will Montano put his signature on fur fashion?

Before his show, he described his collection as colorful, chic, not typical for fur and "pieces that fit into a ready-to-wear lifestyle. That's why I like working with Tommy of Alexandros [the company producing his furs under a license agreement, Montano's first]," he says. "Tommy knows that fur needs to go in a new direction in color, shape and creating a total look by pairing it with ready-to-wear."

Montano has designed dyed fox chubbies, dyed persian lamb pieces, capes, handbags, a persian lamb skirt suit, a simple raincoat shape in dyed and printed rabbit, and fur pants. His color palette includes orange, magenta and "anything that screams. Brown just has never been my color," he adds. "We all have brown hair; why do we need a brown coat to match our hair?"

Montano's fanciful style belies a decidedly level-headed approach to the business of fashion. He was born in LaJunta, Colorado, population 7,000, not close to a major city. It might have been genetic or environmental influences, but he always knew he was destined for a fashion career, in spite of a short detour studying business to please his father. Born to a mother with five sisters "who all loved to look at fashion magazines and sew clothing they found there," Montano has a fashion sketch he made at the tender age of four (at press time he intended to use this sketch to illustrate the invitation for his February show).

He started hand-stitching clothing as early as he can remember, and sewed his first item of clothing -- a men's button-down shirt -- at fourteen. Afterward his father discovered he'd accomplished this on a broken sewing machine. From then on, his mother and aunts were only too happy to keep him busy making clothing and hemming his brother's pants.

For college, Dad suggested business classes at Colorado State. Montano cooperated for three years, then bolted to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City as part of a senior-year exchange program on a scholarship. Despite the fact that he missed his family, he stayed at F.I.T. for a master's degree and earned an internship at Oscar de la Renta.

Immediately after graduation, he started his own wholesale collection. Quickly realizing that "no one paid young designers," he opened up his own retail fashion boutique in the Van Vorst Park area of Jersey City. Two years later, he opened the East Village place he's been at ever since.

So why did he wait another seven years to sprout his wings?

"I felt I had to educate myself," says Montano, "to make myself happy pleasing my own little clientele before I could step out with a wholesale collection and try to please the world."

Besides, he adds, the boutique gave him the capital to launch his wholesale collection in 1998. That's when he decided he was bored "just owning a boutique. I realized, I have only one life, and no matter how difficult, I have to do what I want to do." He says, "I made a commitment to myself to become what I want to be -- a well-known, successful fashion designer."

It's fair to say he's already made a name for himself. Immediately in 1998 he won Cotton Inc.'s "Innovative Designer" title. He has a substantial editorial following, and he's a contributing editor to Cosmogirl magazine.

He operates with no partners and no investor, but he's looking for one. Now he has a ready-to-wear collection, a fur license, is negotiating a license to design a small leather goods collection and is exploring other opportunities in branding the Mark Montano name.

"My life has become much more exciting now," he says of the change.