Category: Fur Guides

Most of what gets worn to a game is printed, and it is printed on polyester. Marc’s answer is the same jacket done properly: hooded mink, a team’s two colours worked into the fur itself, and enough sizes in one order that nobody in the family is left in a nylon coat. The whole run sits together on our Game Day Fur Jackets page.

The four above are wearing one set. Cream mink, a red and gold band running from the shoulder to the hem and across both pockets, a full hood cut from the same skins, and the same jacket made four times over — two adults and two children, ordered together and cut together. It is the red and gold family set, and it is the clearest answer to the question this page exists for: what do you do when there are four of you and only two of you fit an adult size.

What a photograph cannot show you is the weight. This is real fur, so it is warm standing still, which is most of what anybody does at a game — and it is the reason a child in one of these is not asking to go back to the car at half time. Every set in the collection is made the same way.

What a set actually is

A set is one design sized for more than one person, ordered and priced together. The stripe placement is the same on every jacket in it, the pile runs the same way, and the pelts are matched across the whole order so the colours agree — which is the part you cannot get by buying two jackets separately and hoping. Every set in the collection is made this way in our workroom on West 30th Street.

The colours are dyed mink pieced into the body, not ribbon and not printed trim sewn on top. The surface stays one continuous pile from the hood to the hem, and the colours wear at the rate the fur around them does. That is the difference between these and the satin bombers sold outside every arena, and it is why they end up on the clearance rail at a price that makes sense for something you will wear eight winters.

The family sets, which is the point of this page

Four of them, and between them they cover most shapes a family comes in. The green and black set is cut for two parents and a toddler. The red and gold set takes two adults and two children. The pink and blue set is a parents-and-child set cut for basketball colours rather than football ones.

The one worth looking at twice is the purple and gold set — parents, grandparents and children, in black mink, all in the same jacket. Three generations in one photograph is a thing families organise once and then frame, and it is far easier to arrange when the coats arrive together and already match.

Family sets are priced on request rather than listed, because the number of jackets and the sizes change with the family. Tell us who is in it and we quote the set. The couples sets are priced on their own pages.

If it is just the two of you

Then it is a couples set, and there are ten of them in the collection across football and basketball colourways. The original his and hers pair is the one most people start with: one hooded mink, white for him and black for her, with the city’s colours down each sleeve and across both pockets.

Put it on before you buy it

Fur is the hardest thing to judge from a photograph, and a hooded jacket is the hardest fur. It sits differently on different shoulders and the hood changes a face more than people expect. So try it on first: upload a photograph and see the jacket on yourself before anyone commits to a set of four.

It is free and there is no account to make. You get three a day from one device, and a verified email lifts that limit if you want to work through a family’s worth of colourways in one sitting. The styler is free for everyone too — put yourself in falling snow, in Paris, on a ski slope or at a restaurant table, which is a better test of a winter coat than a blank studio wall. Every picture keeps the small credit bar along the bottom saying it was generated; we would rather that than pretend.

Sizes, and how long a set takes

Every jacket in a set is cut to measure, so a family set is not four coats off a rail in ascending sizes — it is one pattern graded across the people wearing it. Send us heights and chest measurements, or come to the workroom and we will take them; either way the set is cut afterwards, not before.

Children are the part worth thinking about. A child’s jacket is cut with the sleeve and the body left long inside the seam, so it can be let out twice as they grow — the same trick that has always been used on a good coat, and the reason a well-made child’s fur tends to outlive the child’s interest in the team. When it is finally outgrown it comes back and gets remade for the next one down, which is remodelling, a thing this workroom has done far longer than it has made game day jackets.

Turnaround on a family set runs three to four weeks in season, longer in November when everybody has had the same idea at once. If a date matters — a birthday, a home game, a photograph somebody wants at Christmas — say so when you ask for the quote on the set you want and we will tell you honestly whether it can be done rather than promising it and hoping.

And when the season ends, it comes back to be cleaned and stored rather than spending July in a hall cupboard. Fur kept in a warm house dries out; fur kept properly does not. That is the whole of the maintenance, and it is what separates one the family still wears in five years from one they do not.

What these are, and what they are not

They are not licensed merchandise and they are not sold as it. There is no team name, league mark or crest anywhere on any piece in the collection — what you are buying is two colours in fur, in the combination a city happens to wear. If you want a crest, buy a crest; this is a fur coat that happens to be in your colours.

They are also not stadium disposables. A mink coat asks to be looked after, which means it comes back to us each spring to be cleaned and stored rather than living in a hall cupboard through July. Do that and it outlasts the child, which is the usual reason families end up ordering a second size rather than a second set.

And they are warm in a way a printed one is not, which matters more than anything else on this page if the seat is outdoors in January. Everything is on the Game Day Fur Jackets page, and if the colours you want are not there yet, ask — most of these started as somebody’s request.

Until this week, the best part of our virtual try-on was behind an email address. You could put a fur on yourself for free, but changing the scene, adding glasses or a bag, or seeing the same picture at night needed an account. As of 10 September, all of it is open to everyone. You can try on a fur coat online, free, and change the background, the light and the accessories without giving us anything. The only thing an email buys now is more goes in a day.

Every picture in this post was made in the studio with one photograph of a model and the fuchsia hi-low mink from our clearance rail. Nothing was retouched, and every one keeps the credit bar along the bottom, because that is how we want them.

Nine backgrounds, and every one of them by day or by night

Pick a scene and the studio puts you in it: Paris in the snow, Central Park, Aspen, a winter wedding, a fur party, a cruise in Alaska, a department store, a fine restaurant, a ski slope. What is new since last week is a pair of chips under whichever scene you pick, one pale and one navy. Tap the navy one and the same fuchsia is shot after dark.

Look at what the light does to the colour. In daylight the fuchsia is a clean hot pink with the guard hair catching white; under the lamps it drops a full shade towards magenta and the leather trim goes darker still. That is not the tool getting it wrong. It is what a dyed fur does after dark, and it is exactly the thing you cannot judge from a product photograph before you come to West 30th Street.

The three indoor scenes work slightly differently, and the panel says so. In the restaurant, the party and the store, the chips change what you see through the window, and the room keeps its own lamplight either way. The restaurant defaults to night because that is when people are in one.

Colour on the accessories

The style options stack, unlike the backgrounds. Glasses, a pocketbook, boots, stilettos, a watch, a necklace, earrings, a fur headband: tick as many as you like and they all go on together. The change this week is the strip of swatches that appears under whichever one you tapped last. Earrings come in gold, silver, rose gold and platinum. Glasses come in black, tortoise, gold, silver and rose gold.

Two honest notes on that picture. The hi-low itself is right: the zip, the leather band at the hem, the wide fur-turned cuffs, the curve of the hem front to back. But nobody asked for a matching fur hat, matching gloves or matching boots, and the tool added all three in every scene. It dresses you head to toe in the colour you chose. Treat everything you did not tick as Google’s idea rather than ours.

The piece in the pictures, and its six other colours

Something else went onto the product pages this week. Where a piece is made in several colours, its page now shows all of them in a row under the try-on button, and you can step across without going back to the collection. The fuchsia hi-low is one of seven: black, brown, burgundy, emerald green, fuchsia, royal blue and ruby red, every one at the same clearance price.

Try the colour rather than guessing at it. Open the fuchsia, press the green button, and then step across to the burgundy or the royal blue and press it again. Most people are wrong about their own colour in one direction or the other, and a minute with the tool settles it before anyone has driven anywhere.

Everything in this post is on the clearance rail

The hi-low, the hooded jackets that went up on Friday, the crop jackets, the degradé hooded pieces: all of it sits in the Fur Coat Clearance Sale collection at a clearance price, and all of it can be tried on the same way. These are the three newest.

Try it on now, and put it somewhere

It takes one photograph of you, full length, in ordinary clothes. Press the green Virtually Try It On button on any piece, upload the picture, and the first result is back in about twenty seconds. Then pick a scene, pick day or night, tick whatever accessories you want and their colours, and press the big black button that says Update My Image. Every result stays in a strip underneath so you can go back to an earlier one.

Guests get three a day. If you want more than that, the studio asks for an email address and sends a six-digit code, and that is the entire sign-up: no password, no account page, nothing to manage. A verified address simply has no daily limit. Everything else on this page you already have.

What it is honestly good at, and what it is not

It is good at the piece: the length, the hem, where the cuffs fall, how a dyed fur behaves in different light. Those are the things you cannot judge from a product photograph on a model who is not you, and they are the things the try-on gets right often enough to be useful.

It is not a fitting. It re-poses you, it dresses you in accessories you never chose, it renders an illustration rather than the actual skins. When the picture makes you want the piece, the next step is the same as it has always been: come in, and we will fit it, alter it and look after it for as long as you own it. Or call the shop and ask which colour we would put you in. We have opinions too.

Fur is one of the few things left that is still cut for the person wearing it. That is worth knowing before you start, because it changes the question you are asking. In ready-to-wear you are hunting for a size that already exists. In fur you are mostly deciding what you want made — and a piece that fits a 22 is not a harder job than one that fits a 6. It is the same job with different measurements.

We keep over a hundred pieces in extended and tall sizes, and we alter and make to measure in our own New York workroom. This is roughly what we say to anyone who comes in and asks where to start.

The shoulder is the measurement that matters

Almost everything on a fur can be changed. It can be shortened, taken in, let out through the body, the sleeve narrowed or lengthened, the lining replaced, the collar restyled. The one thing that is genuinely difficult is the shoulder.

The shoulder seam is what the whole garment hangs from. If it sits too far out, the sleeve breaks in the wrong place and the whole thing looks borrowed no matter what else is right. If it sits too narrow, it pulls across the back the moment you reach forward. Moving it means opening the garment at the top and re-cutting — and on fur, re-matching every pelt across that seam. That is work we do in our own workroom, but it is the one alteration worth avoiding if you can.

So when you try something on, ignore the closure for a minute and look at the shoulder. That is the fit question. Most of the rest is work we can do.

Which furs add bulk, and which do not

Most guides answer this with colour. Colour has very little to do with it. What a fur does to your outline comes from the pelt and the way it is cut.

• Fox is the high-volume fur — long guard hair over a dense underfur, so it stands away from the body and moves when you walk. It adds width wherever it sits. That is exactly why a fox collar or fox cuffs work so well on an otherwise plain piece, and why full-length fox is a deliberately big silhouette rather than a discreet one.
• Sheared mink is the opposite. The guard hair is removed and the underfur cut to one even depth, so it lies flat and close — nearer to velvet than to fur. It is the least bulky fur we sell.
• Let-out mink — each pelt cut into diagonal strips and resewn into one long narrow band — falls in unbroken vertical lines from shoulder to hem. Vertical lines lengthen. There is a reason this is the classic full-length cut.
• Horizontal, or banded, work runs the fur across the body instead of down it. It takes more skins and far more seaming, and it is beautiful — but it reads wider. Worth knowing rather than avoiding: on a short jacket it is lovely; on a full-length piece it is a statement.

If you want fur that does not add visual width, start with a sheared mink or a let-out mink in a plain colour. If you want presence, start with fox.

Length changes more than you would think

• A stroller stops between the hip and mid-thigh. It is the length most people actually wear, because it covers you sitting down and still lets you walk without gathering a skirt of fur around your knees.
• Seven-eighths stops just above the ankle. It reads as full length without dragging, and it is easier over boots.
• Full length is the warmest and the most formal, and the weight sits in the skirt rather than on your shoulders. A nine-pound full-length often feels lighter on than a seven-pound stroller, because the length carries it.

Made to measure is not the exotic option

We have been cutting fur in New York since 1870, and made to measure is simply how we work — not a special service with a queue in front of it. You choose the fur, the length and the collar; we take your measurements; it is built to them.

That is worth saying plainly, because a lot of people arrive assuming that a larger size means waiting on a manufacturer to decide to make one. In fur, it does not. Nothing is being scaled up from a sample. It is being cut for you.

Can something you already own be let out?

Often, yes — and it is the first thing to ask about anything you have inherited or have not worn in a few years. How far depends on the seam allowance and the condition of the skins. Fur has more give at the seams than cloth does, but skins that have dried out will tear rather than stretch, and no amount of skill changes that.

When a piece cannot be let out far enough on its own, the answer is usually to add rather than to stretch: a panel let into each side seam, a contrasting inset, a new sleeve or collar in a second fur. Done properly this does not read as a repair — it reads as the design.

Bring it in and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth the work before you spend anything on it. Our fur services FAQ covers what we can and cannot do, and cleaning, repairs and cold storage are all handled in the same workroom.

Two honest warnings

Be careful buying vintage without a fitting. Older pieces were cut narrower through the shoulder and the arm than most people expect, and the shoulder is the one thing that is hard to move. Something two sizes too small in the body is often workable. Something too narrow across the shoulders usually is not.

Ignore the size on the label. Fur labels are inconsistent across decades and makers, and a great many of our pieces have no size in them at all, because they were made for one person. Measurements and a fitting are the only things that tell you anything.

Where to start

Our plus size and tall collection runs to more than a hundred pieces. Every one of them can be altered, and anything else in the shop can be made to your measurements whether or not it appears there.

See it on yourself before you speak to anyone

Every piece in the shop has a virtual try-on. Upload a photograph of yourself and you are wearing the fur about a minute later. It is free, and you do not need an account to try it.

This matters more here than almost anywhere else. If you have spent years guessing from a photograph of someone built nothing like you, seeing the piece on your own shoulders settles it in a minute. Put a fox and a sheared mink on the same photograph and the difference in bulk stops being a paragraph and becomes something you can see.

Sign up — it is also free — and you can change the background too, from Paris in the snow to a winter wedding, and add glasses, a bag or boots so you are judging the whole look rather than the fur on its own.

Or call us on +1 212-563-3877 and describe what you are after. We have been doing this since 1870, and we would rather talk you out of the wrong one than sell it to you.

We have built something we have wanted for years, and it is live on every piece in the shop. You can now see a fur on yourself before you ask us anything — upload a photograph, and a minute later you are wearing the coat.

It is free, there is no account to make, and you do not have to give us your email to use it. This is a note on what it does, how to use it, and — honestly — what it cannot do.

How to use the virtual try-on

The virtual try-on is three steps, and it takes about a minute — most of which is waiting.

1. Find the “Virtually Try it On” button

It sits on every product page under Request a Quote, and on every collection card. Tap it on the piece you are curious about — a black mink coat, a men’s stroller, a bolero. All 1,600-odd pieces in the shop work.

2. Upload a photograph of yourself

Read the short note about what this is, tap I Understand, and choose a picture.

A full-length photograph, taken straight on in decent light, gives the best result — head to feet if you can manage it. A phone selfie in a mirror is perfect, and you can keep the phone in your hand; we are used to it. It does not matter what is behind you.

3. Wait about a minute

Then you are looking at yourself in the coat. From there you can save it to your phone, send it to whoever you were going to ask anyway, or Request a Quote on the piece with the picture attached.

Every piece in the shop can be tried on this way, and you can do it as often as you like on as many pieces as you like.

If you want to change something

Give us an email address — one six-digit code, no password, nothing to manage — and the studio opens up. You can change the background and put yourself anywhere: a Paris street, a ski lodge, a plain studio backdrop. You can add accessories, from sunglasses to a handbag. And you can keep going until it looks right, with no daily limit.

That is the only thing the email buys. We use it to send you the picture and to talk to you about the piece if you want us to.

What it is honestly good at, and what it is not

A virtual try-on is very good at the question people actually have, which is how does this length sit on me. A stroller that looks cropped on a six-foot model is a different garment on someone five foot two, and no amount of studying a photograph tells you that. Now you can see it.

It is not a photograph of the coat. It is an illustration made by Google Gemini, and it will occasionally get a collar or a trim slightly wrong. We have spent weeks tightening it — the whole point of the work has been making the picture match the actual garment, panel for panel — but AI makes mistakes, and we would rather say so than have you discover it.

So treat the virtual try-on as a fitting-room mirror, not a catalogue. When you are serious about a piece, come to 212 West 30th Street and feel it. That is still the only real test, and it always will be.

One thing we had to fix, and it is worth telling you about

Early on, the tool was quietly slimming people.

Not deliberately — we had asked it for “a professional studio photograph,” and to an AI trained on fashion advertising, that phrase means a slim model. A plus-size customer uploaded her photograph and got back a picture of someone thinner.

We threw that version out. For a house that keeps over a hundred plus size and tall fur coats on the racks, a tool that reshapes the customer is worse than no tool at all — it is useless as a fit reference, and it is insulting besides. The instructions now say, in plain terms, that the person’s body must not be changed: same build, same height, same proportions. The coat is what we are selling. You are not the thing that needs altering.

Try it on something

Start wherever you like. The fur clearance sale is where most people begin, because the prices are cut and there is a bit of everything. If you are new to fur altogether, our fur coat buying guide is the honest version of what to look for.

And if the picture tells you what you needed to know, ring us on +1 (212) 563-3877. We have been fitting furs at this address since 1870, and we would rather talk to you than sell to you.

Run your hand across a chinchilla fur coat once and you will understand why people have crossed continents for it. Nothing else in the fur world — not mink, not sable, not fox — feels like it. Chinchilla is, by any honest measure, the softest fur on earth, and it has been the quiet obsession of royalty, Hollywood and collectors for over four centuries. This guide covers what makes a chinchilla fur coat so extraordinary, the colors it comes in, what one costs in 2026, how the coats are made, and how to care for a piece so it outlasts its decade.

What Makes Chinchilla the Softest Fur in the World

The secret is density. A human grows one hair per follicle. A chinchilla grows as many as sixty, packing tens of thousands of hairs into every square centimeter — the densest coat of any land animal. Hairs that crowded have no room to be coarse: each one grows finer than silk thread, and together they form a surface so plush your fingers sink out of sight. The fur is so dense, in fact, that parasites cannot live in it — nature’s own quality certificate.

That density evolved high in the Andes mountains of South America, where freezing nights and thin air demanded extraordinary insulation. The result is a fur that is astonishingly warm for its weight: a full chinchilla jacket feels almost weightless on the shoulders, which is why every conversation about the warmest furs for winter eventually arrives here. Warmth without weight is chinchilla’s signature trick.

From the Andes to the Avenue: A Short History

The fur takes its name from the Chincha people of the Andes, who wore it centuries before Spanish traders carried the first pelts to Europe and made them the envy of royal courts. By the early twentieth century, wild chinchillas had been hunted nearly to extinction — and the trade would have died with them if not for an American mining engineer named Mathias Chapman, who in 1923 was permitted to bring eleven animals from the Andes to California. Nearly every chinchilla in the world today descends from that handful. Wild chinchillas have been protected for a century; every pelt in the modern trade comes from ranches, where generations of selective breeding have produced fur finer than anything the Spanish court ever saw.

Hollywood did the rest. From the silver-screen sirens of the thirties to courtside celebrities today, a chinchilla coat photographs like no other fur — the shimmer reads on camera. It has never stopped being the fur of the grand entrance.

Natural Colors: Standard Grey, Black Velvet and Beyond

The classic chinchilla color — what furriers call standard — is that unmistakable blue-grey: a slate back softening through pearl-grey sides into a bright white belly. It flatters every skin tone, reads as silver or blue depending on the light, and has been the shade of choice since the fur first reached Europe.

Selective breeding has added a family of shades. The most coveted is black velvet chinchilla — a deep charcoal back grading into graphite, named for exactly what it feels like. Beige and white chinchilla are rarer still, and dyed pieces open the palette completely: a chinchilla jacket in cocoa, pink or emerald green turns the softest fur in the world into the boldest thing in the room.

Browse the whole range — full-length coats, jackets, boleros, stoles and shrugs — in our Chinchilla Coats & Chinchilla Jackets collection.

How a Chinchilla Coat Is Made

Chinchilla pelts are small — a fraction the size of a mink skin — so a single garment is worked from dozens of them, and that arithmetic shapes everything about the craft. The furrier’s first task is matching: pelts must agree in density, in the depth of the slate, in the width of the pale banding, or the finished coat looks patchwork instead of poured. Matching a full-length chinchilla coat can mean sorting through hundreds of skins to find the few dozen that belong together.

Then comes the signature construction: the pelts are laid in flowing horizontal rows, the natural shading aligned so the slate-and-pearl ripples run unbroken around the body. When the wearer moves, the surface shimmers like water. It is the most recognizable silhouette in fur — and one of the most demanding, which is a large part of what you are paying for. A chinchilla coat is days of a master furrier’s hands before it is anything else.

Chinchilla Coats for Men

Some furs read as feminine by tradition; chinchilla has never been one of them. A chinchilla coat for men has been a statement of arrival from the jazz age to the courtside seats — boxers, ballplayers and musicians have all worn theirs into the cameras. Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury collected his chinchilla stroller from our New York showroom, and the photographs tell you everything about how this fur carries on a big frame.

We keep a dedicated rack of men’s chinchilla coats — bombers, hip-length jackets and full-length pieces — and we cut custom for tall and broad builds that off-the-rack fur never fits. Men’s chinchilla runs slightly darker in our selection, and the black velvet shades in particular wear like formal evening tailoring.

How Much Does a Chinchilla Fur Coat Cost?

Chinchilla sits in the top tier of fur pricing — behind only the finest Russian sable among the most expensive furs in the world — because the pelts are small, delicate to work, and slow to produce.

Real numbers from our racks today: a chinchilla fur shrug or stole starts around $4,725–$7,150 — the honest way into the fur if you want the touch without the full commitment. Jackets run roughly $12,018 to $20,350 depending on color and cut; the black velvet jacket above is $15,950. A full-length chinchilla fur coat sits between $21,450 and $26,400 at current sale pricing, against regular prices up to $38,500.

Two things worth knowing about that pricing. First, it has been rising: chinchilla, lynx and sable have all climbed steeply as supply tightens — we broke down the numbers in our analysis of luxury fur price increases — which makes today’s sale racks unusually good value. Second, a well-kept chinchilla holds its worth: these are the pieces that come back to us decades later for appraisal, remodeling and inheritance, not for replacement.

Chinchilla or Mink: Which Should You Choose?

The honest answer we give in the showroom: they are for different lives. Mink is the everyday aristocrat — durable, forgiving, happy on a subway platform in January. Chinchilla is the occasion fur: softer and lighter than mink by a distance, with a shimmer mink cannot match, but more delicate and never meant for daily errands. Run one errand in the rain in each and the mink shrugs while the chinchilla sulks.

Many of our clients own both and reach for each a few dozen times a season — the mink for the week, the chinchilla for the nights that matter. If the coat must survive everything, choose mink. If the coat must silence a room, nothing on earth beats a chinchilla coat.

How to Judge Quality in a Chinchilla

Four tests, no instruments required. Press it: push your palm flat into the fur and lift away — dense, prime fur springs back instantly and holds no handprint. Read the color: the slate should be clear and cool, the white belly bright, the line between them clean; muddiness means lesser pelts. Follow the rows: in a well-made coat the horizontal banding flows unbroken across seams — if the ripple stutters, the matching was rushed. Feel the weight: real quality is startlingly light. A heavy chinchilla is telling you about its leather, not its fur.

And the fifth test, the only one that really decides it: put it on. Density and cut can be described; the feeling cannot.

Caring for a Chinchilla Fur Coat

Delicacy is the tax on all that softness, and care is what separates a chinchilla that lasts decades from one that doesn’t. Three rules:

Keep it dry. That dense coat holds moisture against the leather. Never wear chinchilla in rain or snow; if it dampens, hang it away from heat and let it dry naturally, then shake — never brush wet fur.

Summer it professionally. A home closet in a New York July is the fastest way to ruin any fur, and chinchilla most of all. Our climate-controlled fur storage in NYC holds pieces at the temperature and humidity the fur demands — the full routine is in our guide on how to store a fur coat.

Clean it gently, once a year. Chinchilla should only ever be cleaned by a furrier using the fur-specific drum method — never a dry cleaner’s solvents. Done right, the fur comes back with its shimmer renewed. Treated this way, a chinchilla passes to the next generation; our workroom regularly remodels inherited pieces into modern silhouettes.

Trying Chinchilla in New York

A chinchilla fur coat is not a photograph purchase — it is a touch purchase. No image has ever prepared anyone for the first time their hand disappears into the fur. Marc Kaufman Furs has dressed New York in fur since 1870, and our 30th Street showroom keeps one of the largest chinchilla selections in the country — stoles to full-length, standard grey to black velvet, with custom sizing done in-house. Contact a fur expert or call +1 (212) 563-3877 to arrange a visit. Bring your hand.

Sable and mink are the two greatest names in fur, and after 156 years of cutting both we can compare them honestly: they are not competitors. Mink is the fur you live in; sable is the fur you ascend to. One is the most durable, versatile luxury fur ever farmed, and the other is the single most precious pelt in the world. Here is how the sable vs mink question actually settles – in warmth, weight, feel and price – and one legendary piece from our racks that refuses to choose at all.

What makes mink the everyday legend

Mink earned its place as the default luxury fur for a reason. The pelts are dense, even and remarkably durable – a well-kept mink coat wears for twenty-five years and more, which is why so many come back to us for restyling rather than retirement. Mink takes color beautifully, cuts cleanly into everything from bombers to full-length coats, and its price has a wide, honest range: a fine mink jacket starts around the price of a good watch, and even a Blackglama – the most famous black mink in the world – stays under $6,600 on our racks.

What makes sable the crown

Sable is what fur feels like when nothing is held back. The Russian sable – and above all the Barguzin sable from the forests east of Lake Baikal – carries the silkiest, lightest, most lustrous pelt in the world. Where mink is smooth, sable is weightless; you feel the warmth but barely the coat. The color shifts naturally from deep brown to a silvered, gold-tipped shimmer that no dye has ever convincingly imitated, and the rarest of all – golden sable – glows amber in daylight. That rarity is the price of entry: a full length Barguzin sable sits at $94,875 on our racks, and our finest Russian golden sable coat is $302,500. Sable is not bought instead of mink; it is bought after mink.

Sable and mink at a glance

Warmth: both superb; mink is denser, sable warmer for its weight. Weight: sable is dramatically lighter – the famous “weightless” fur. Feel: mink is smooth and plush; sable is silk you can wear. Durability: mink wins – it is the workhorse of luxury furs; sable asks to be treated like the treasure it is. Price: fine mink runs from the low thousands; true Russian sable begins where mink ends and climbs past $275,000. Verdict: if you will wear it hard and often, buy mink. If you want the rarest thing in the room, nothing on earth touches sable.

From Russia With Love: when you refuse to choose

Some pieces end the sable vs mink debate by ignoring it. Our From Russia With Love stroller pairs golden sable with white mink in a single garment – the silk of sable across the body, the density of mink where a coat takes its wear, photographed on the sweeping staircase it deserves. It is a house showpiece in the truest sense: one of one, made in our New York workroom, and the answer we give when a client asks for both furs at once.

So which should you buy?

Buy mink if this is your first fur, your daily fur, or your only fur – it forgives weather, wear and time like nothing else, and our fur coat buying guide will walk you through choosing one. Buy sable when the coat is the occasion: it is the fur of gifts that stop a room, of collections rather than closets. And if the answer is genuinely both – that is what a furrier since 1870 is for.

See sable and mink side by side in NYC

Comparisons on a screen only go so far; the difference between sable and mink takes about four seconds to understand with your hands. Browse our sable coats and jackets and the full length mink collection, then come feel both at 212 West 30th Street – or call +1 (212) 563-3877 and we will have pieces from each waiting for you.

What is Blackglama mink? It is the most famous name in fur — a trademark reserved for the finest natural black mink raised in North America. Blackglama is not a designer and not a farm: it is a grade. Only a small fraction of each season’s ranch mink is deep enough, silky enough and even enough to earn the Blackglama label, and every authentic Blackglama mink coat carries a numbered tag to prove it. Here is what makes Blackglama mink different, how the label became a legend, and how to recognize the real thing.

Where Blackglama mink comes from

The name dates to 1968, when the Great Lakes Mink Association — GLMA, the “glama” in Blackglama — set out to brand the very best of North American ranch mink. The standard has never changed: naturally deep brown-black pelts, never dyed, with dense underfur and short, perfectly even guard hair that gives the fur its liquid shine. Graders pull only the top pelts of the season; everything else sells as ordinary dark ranch mink. That selectivity is the whole point — Blackglama is a grade, and the grade is unforgiving.

What makes Blackglama different from ordinary black mink

Side by side, the difference shows. Much of the black mink sold today is dyed to reach a uniform jet color; Blackglama mink is natural — bred, not dyed, to a deep espresso-black that moves with the light instead of sitting flat. Because the color is natural it does not fade the way dyed fur can, and the leather beneath stays supple longer. The pelts are denser, the guard hair shorter and more even, the hand silkier. A Blackglama mink coat is, put simply, black mink with a pedigree.

The campaign that made it a legend

Blackglama would still be a graders’ term if not for the most celebrated campaign in fashion advertising. Beginning in 1968, “What becomes a Legend most?” dressed Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis in Blackglama mink — the legends were famously paid not in money but with the coat itself — and the roll call grew to Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Marlene Dietrich and Diana Ross, with Janet Jackson reviving the campaign decades later. The ads made Blackglama shorthand for glamour itself, and a Blackglama mink coat has carried that aura ever since.

How to tell a real Blackglama mink coat

Three checks. The label: authentic garments carry the Blackglama name with a serial number — no numbered label, no Blackglama. The color: natural deep brown-black that shifts in the light, not a flat, dyed jet. The hand: dense, cool and silky, with guard hair so even the surface reads like liquid. Buying vintage? Ask to see the numbered label before anything else — and bring it to a furrier who can verify the fur, not just the tag.

Is a Blackglama mink coat worth it?

If you want a black mink you will wear for decades, yes. Blackglama mink commands a premium over ordinary black mink, but the color never fades, the fur wears beautifully, and the name holds its value the way few furs do — these are the coats that come back to us as heirlooms, not castoffs. For how to judge any fur before you buy — construction, fit, provenance — our fur coat buying guide walks through it step by step.

Blackglama mink in New York

We keep one of the largest Blackglama selections in New York — ten Blackglama pieces on the racks as this is written, from a classic full length Blackglama mink coat to a men’s Blackglama mink jacket trimmed in suede and studs. Browse the black mink coats collection, call +1 (212) 563-3877, or visit the showroom at 212 West 30th Street and feel the difference in person. Marc Kaufman Furs has dressed New York since 1870 — legends optional.

Should you rent a fur coat or buy one? It is the first question we hear from brides, gala guests and stylists — and the honest answer is: it depends on how often the coat will be worn. As furriers who both sell and rent from one of the largest fur collections in New York, we can give you the answer without a sales pitch. Here is when a fur coat rental is the smart move, when buying wins, and how to rent a fur coat in NYC when the date is already on the calendar.

When it makes sense to rent a fur coat

Fur rental exists for the nights that matter once. If any of these sound like you, rent:

• A wedding. A bridal wrap or a full fur over a gown photographs unforgettably — but a piece worn for one winter evening does not need to live in your closet forever. A fur coat rental for a wedding gives you the pictures without the purchase, and the bridal party can rent matching pieces for the day.
• A gala, premiere or black-tie evening. When the invitation is once a year, renting a fur coat delivers the entrance at a fraction of the cost of owning it.
• Photoshoots, film and music videos. Stylists and wardrobe departments rent almost by default — a shoot needs the piece for two days, not twenty years. That is why productions from editorial covers to feature films pull from rental racks.
• Trying fur before you commit. Renting a mink coat for a weekend is the best possible test drive before investing in one of your own.
• Travel. Flying somewhere cold for one week a year? Rent the warmth there is no room to store at home.

When buying beats renting a fur coat

If the coat will be worn every winter, buy. A well-made mink is warm, durable and wearable for decades — rent that same piece ten times and you have paid for a meaningful part of it without owning anything. Buying also opens the doors rental cannot: custom sizing, restyling as fashion changes, and a piece that becomes an heirloom. If that sounds more like you, start with our fur coat buying guide, or browse the mink collection to see what ownership looks like.

How much does it cost to rent a fur coat?

Every fur coat rental is quoted individually, because three things drive the price: the piece (a rex rabbit jacket and a full-length mink sit at very different points), the length of the rental (an evening, a weekend, or a multi-week production hold), and how it will be used (a night at a gala is not a fashion shoot with lighting rigs). Send the dates and the look, and you get a real number rather than an estimate — no surprises, and rush requests are welcome.

How fur rental works in NYC

Our process is built for deadlines. Tell us the dates, the occasion and what you are looking for; we confirm availability and terms; then you fit the piece at our West 30th Street showroom — or for productions, we can arrange messenger delivery in New York City and nationwide shipping when the schedule allows. The rental collection spans mink, fox and rex rabbit in every length, in women’s and men’s sizes, from classic naturals to statement colors. See what is on the racks and check your dates on our fur rentals page.

Renting a fur for a wedding?

Winter brides are half of this business. Wraps, capes and stoles rent beautifully for a ceremony, and they photograph even better — see our bride’s guide to winter wedding furs for how to style them, or browse the wedding furs collection. Then send us the date; December Saturdays book out first.

The takeaway

Rent a fur coat for the once-a-year night, the shoot, the wedding, the test drive. Buy when the coat will earn its place every winter. Either way the fur is real, the fit is checked by furriers, and the piece has probably already been photographed on someone famous. Ready to check your dates? Start at fur rentals, call +1 (212) 563-3877, or visit the showroom at 212 West 30th Street — renting a fur in New York has worked this way since 1870.

Writing about fur rentals for a story or production? Our press kit and media contact are here.