In 1996, an animal rights activist yelled, “This is for the animals, shame on you, you’re a fur hag!” and tossed a dead raccoon on Anna Wintour’s plate as she lunched at New York’s Four Seasons. Wintour, the British-born then editor-in-chief of US Vogue magazine, had hailed the coming winter as the season when furs would be big. “This is the moment for me to confess that, yes, I wear fur. I also eat juicy steaks,” she added. People were upset. It became taboo to wear fur. Now fur is back. But the fashion for fur has not reached the heights of the mid-20th Century, when the mink coat was the apogee of elegance.
Take a look at these 17 vintage snapshots of people wearing their mink coats, pulled from Robert E. Jackson’s fantastic collection:
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