Lesser of Two Evils - But Which?

This week:  fur, chemicals and my own personal Jesus.

This woman does not look like 1959.  Maybe it's her makeup, but she looks unmodern.  Rather late 1940's.  Her expression is tense.  She reminds me of the few European women I knew in Orange County in the 1960s - out of place, old fashioned.

The fur is another EMBA Autumn Haze, once more photographed by Virginia Thoren.  See my earlier post for the EMBA/UMPA thing.  Coming soon:  a fur cheat sheet and a field trip to the Saks fur salon - if there is one in San Francisco.

Maybe it is because I am doing this, but I have never before noticed so much fur in present-day Vogue editorials.  So much unapologetic fur.  (And once more -- how bad is it, really?  It is repugnant.  But so are a lot of things that don't trigger the moral outrage that fur does.)

Fur and me:

I had a mouton jacket that my mother wore in the 1950s.  I wore it in college and could not possibly have looked fat, but always felt roly-poly.  Don't know what happened to it. It had that nice, satin lining you see in fur coats - but not the embroidered initials.  

Tried on a fur coat at the fancy Salvation Army Store in Pasadena once.  Either mink or raccoon.  It did not suit me.

In the mid-1960s we lived in an apartment complex in Fullerton, California.  It was said of a woman from "back east" whom nobody liked:  She's the kind of woman who wears a fur coat to empty the garbage.   That was because she did wear her fur to empty the garbage.  She did not look elegant emptying the garbage.

Jack Winter pants, the premium denim of their day ($15.00 converted to $113.00)   They don't look too comfortable.  Ur- mom-pants.

Quick facts on Jack Winter:  manufacturer of ladies' pants from 1953 through the seventies.  Not slacks - pants.  Based in Wisconsin.  Engineered for a tight fit. Although I don't think that worked out so well on the model in plaid.

These pants were half wool and half acrylic.  I am still not able to explain what acrylic is.  Oddly enough, when I first started this blog, I was very curious about the physics of various fabrics, why they were stretchy or shiny.  Despite staring at numerous scientific websites, I still haven't a clue.  But I do understand this:  Creslan was made by American Cyanamid, a company that upon its demise in 1994, left a foul chemical corpse.

Which reminds me that I have come across fur one other time: there was a small mink farm in the woods next to the small town in Germany where my husband grew up.  You could smell it for quite a ways.  One year we went back and the mink were gone.  I don't know how badly the woods were contaminated, but it wasn't as bad as a Superfund site.

I'm coming down once more  cautiously on the side of cruelty:  there is something in-your-face loathsome about killing a mink to make a coat.  The impersonal poisoning of a chemical dump is also loathsome.  I'm beginning to accept mink farms.  Can't countenance seal fur.  Which turned up this month in Vogue.

But is fur necessary at all?  No.  Thus indefensible.  Like fois gras, I suppose.  Still, it is beautiful and I'm open to persuasion.  How about some gorgeous animal that died a natural death?  Why not?

Does anyone actually wear fur?  Certainly not in Berkeley and Oakland.  Although, I have long had the notion  of sweeping into the Tuesday night Berkeley City Council meeting, dripping with mink and Shalimar, demanding first cleaner sidewalks, then foreign policy.   I won't do it without the mink.


Let's Go to the Movies!

  *  The ups and downs of a Prince of Judea, with mystical interludes and a cast of thousands.

  *  Charlton Heston is often acting by himself, especially with Stephen Boyd - a big year for him - who seemed a lot happier in Best of Everything;   chariot race and dramatic pacing better in 1925 version; story doesn't even make sense;  no dramatic tension; turgid direction gives ample time to ponder holes in plot both big and small:   Why do Esther and Ben Hur's mother send him into the leper cave alone only to blunder around the leper tents scaring the poor occupants and causing much distress to his beloved, dying sister?   Why does it seem as if only a few hours elapses between the Sermon on the Mount and the crucifixion?  If Ben Hur is the Prince of Judea and filthy rich, why does he have no friends to help him find his mother in prison?  Aside from the sea battle and chariot race - why doesn't anything really happen?

  *  Jesus (Claude Heater) and I were once agents at the same Prudential Real Estate office in San Francisco.  He was notable for little selling and much opining.

Hey - it's December 1959!  Let's shop  A Vogue Christmas from now until the end of the year - our year.  Best music, food, gifts of 1959.