vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #159 / Social life / Reading article...

Tear your hair out if you like, animal rights activists. Vladivostok is crazy about fur, and Mink is its biggest producer.

It is a bitter Vladivostok morning, predawn, 22 below zero, and you are struggling against the wind on your way to the bus stop.

The cold bites through your layers of clothes and the heavy coat you’re wearing. And then you approach a woman heading up the hill, shaggy as a bear. Her face florid from the cold, but she’s obviously warm in her ankle-length coat. She’s wearing fur.

Back off legions of animal rights activists, models who’d rather go naked than wear fur, those who throw paint on the mink coats displayed in Park Avenue stores. You’re in Russia, now, and when it gets cold enough, ethics takes a back seat to survival.

“We don’t have an anti-fur movement, and I think it’s purely for climatic reasons,” said Vera Sholokova, general director of Mink joint-stock company. “You just can’t wear anything else in this weather. The thing is, furs are not a decoration in Russia. They serve a function. It’s a way to protect yourself against the cold. In Yakuts the temperature gets down to -60 in the winter. What else can you wear?”

Sholokova heads the premiere fur coat manufacturer in Primorye, according to an industry spokesman who asked not to be identified. Two other companies — Rossiya and Sobolyok — also make furs, but Mink has the highest quality, he said.

Mink is a firm that has gotten serious about style. Starting in 1991, it made 12 billion rubles in 1996 ($2 million), and in 1998 it projects an income of 19 million in new rubles ($3.17 million). It has grown from 12 employees to 100, and sews its own furs from patterns it buys in Milan. So far, the 80 garments Mink sews every month have been gobbled up in the local market, though there are hopes of expanding internationally.

Mink sells its coats and stoles from three shops in Vladivostok, two of which also house the sewing rooms where the furs are stitched. In a city of crowded stores and concrete floors and cantankerous shopkeepers, Mink’s swank salon at 26 Okeansky Avenue stands out. It looks like a Beverly Hills boutique, classy and spare, with only a few racks of coats and hats.

The season for Mink begins in March, when it sends representatives to Milan, the center of fur fashion, said Ludmila Ivanischeva, deputy general director of Mink. There they buy patterns, which the company turns into its next season’s garments.

Fur fashion is still strong, oddly enough, in the Mediterranean; in addition to the Italian patterns, Mink also imports garments and furs from Turkey and Greece. Fashionable streets in Cyprus are lined with stores selling furs (though the signs are usually in Russian, as well as Greek.) Russia has been famous for furs for centuries, and the need for furs led to the exploration of Siberia and the Far East. Yet during Soviet times, fur fashion was hard to find in Russia itself; most furs were exported for hard currency. Thus the growing market for furs is a new rediscovery in Russian fashion. The catch, of course, is the price. Furs can range from $700 for a nutria coat off the rack in an open market to $4,700 and up for ferret and other furs. (For a time there were even dog-skin coats on the market.)

On a bitter afternoon recently, Anna Gavrlinko, a doctor, holds closed the collar of her fur coat. She owns two coats for the worst of the winter: A long sheepskin coat, and a fur. She considers it essential to stay warm. As a doctor, she sees too many people who caught colds from exposure to the elements.

Besides, she said, “Fur looks better. In the summer if you want to look nice, you put on a good dress. But in the winter if you want to dress up, you wear fur.”

Looking for a fur for the winter? Here’s what it might cost you.

• Average prices for mink coat: 18,000 to 24,000
  
• Exclusive pattern mink coat: 26,000 to 29,000
  
• Top-range mink with herringbone pattern: 37,000
  
• Ferret coat with herringbone pattern: 6 million
  
• Mink jacket: 15,000-22,000
  
• Mink cape: 8,000-12,000
  
• Men’s mink coat: 20,000 to 26,000