Category: Fur Guides

A mink jacket is the fur that gets worn. A full-length is for evenings and the coldest weeks; a jacket goes over jeans on an ordinary Tuesday, sits comfortably in a car, and is the piece we suggest to anyone buying a first fur. This is what we tell that buyer in our New York workroom: where a jacket ends, which shape does what, how to judge the fur, what the colours are called, how it should fit and what you are paying for.

Below: length, the shapes, judging the fur, colour, men’s jackets, mink against fox and sable, fit and plus size, the price, and how to see a jacket on yourself before you decide.

Where a Jacket Ends

Length is what makes it a jacket. Cropped ends above the waist and is cut for high-waisted jeans or a dress. Waist-length sits on the belt line. Hip-length, the classic, covers a sweater and the top of your trousers, and it is the one that suits most heights. Past the hip it becomes a stroller, our word for a length between the hip and mid-thigh: see the mink strollers. Longer than that it is a mink coat, which has its own buying guide.

The Shapes

Three of this autumn’s mink jackets show how far the shape has moved from the boxy jacket of thirty years ago: a ruffled jacket with a peplum, the short flared frill at the hem; a cropped jacket that zips to a stand collar; and a crop with puff shoulders and a notched collar.

The classic shapes do more work than they get credit for. A stand-up collar frames the face and closes against the wind, and deep turn-back cuffs let you wear the sleeve longer or shorter. A hood replaces a hat, which is why the hooded pieces also sit with our hooded furs. A belt gives a waist to a fur that would otherwise hang straight, and a zip front with leather trim makes it a jacket for the car, the game and the school run.

How to Judge the Fur

Press the fur flat with your palm and let go. Good mink springs straight back, and the guard hairs, the longer glossy hairs on top, lie evenly with a deep shine over a dense underfur. Then turn back the hem and look at the leather where you can: soft and pale is right, stiff or papery is not. The same checks are in our buying guide for every fur.

Then look at how the skins were worked, because on a jacket it changes the whole character. Let out means each skin was cut into narrow strips and re-sewn to run the length of the garment, which gives the unbroken vertical line; we showed it step by step in how let-out mink is made. Horizontal uses whole skins in bands across the body: lighter, more casual, and the look of most hooded and zip-front jackets. Sheared mink has the guard hair cut down to a short velvet pile, flatter and lighter again.

Female skins are smaller, lighter and silkier; male skins are larger and plusher. On a short jacket the difference in weight is small, so choose by feel. The darkest, most even ranch skins carry the Blackglama name, explained in what is Blackglama mink.

Colour

Natural mink needs no dye. Ranch is the brown-black most people picture, mahogany a rich red-brown, whiskey a warm golden brown, and there are natural greys and whites. A jacket in one of these goes with everything you own, and each has its own page: black mink, mahogany mink, whiskey mink and white mink.

A jacket is also where colour makes the most sense, because a short bright piece is easier to wear than a long one. The blush jacket at the top of this page is dyed mink with flounce sleeves, a sleeve that opens into a full bell below the elbow. From a good dye house the fur stays as soft as the natural skin, so judge a coloured piece with the same hand test: see pink mink, blue mink and red mink. If you cannot choose between two colours, the try-on below settles it faster than a mirror.

Men’s Mink Jackets

Men wear mink jackets too. The men’s whiskey mink jacket with a fox collar below is the kind of piece they ask us for: a man’s shoulder, a longer sleeve, a collar big enough to turn up, and a length that works over jeans. Bombers, bikers and hooded jackets are with the men’s mink jackets, and the full range of men’s fur coats, in mink, fox, chinchilla and sable, has its own buying guide.

A Mink Jacket Against Fox and Sable

Mink is the sleek one: short, dense, close to the body, and hard-wearing enough for every day. A fox fur coat or jacket is the opposite, long guard hair and real volume, a statement where mink is a habit; the two are compared in mink vs fox. Many jackets take a little of both: a mink body with a fox collar, or a hood trimmed in fox.

A sable coat is lighter, silkier and the most expensive fur we sell, and most people come to it after mink, usually starting with a jacket, as our sable buying guide explains. The two are set side by side in sable vs mink.

Fit, and Plus Size

A jacket shows its fit more than a long piece does, because there is less of it to drape. The shoulder seam sits on the point of your shoulder. The sleeve reaches the wrist bone with your arm down, with room for a sweater. Raise your arms: a cropped jacket will lift, and you should like where it lands. Then close it and sit down; it should not ride up to your chin. The rest is altered at a fitting in our workroom, which is how every piece leaves the shop.

Plus size is made, not scaled. We cut to your measurements, so the shoulder, the sleeve and the hem stay in proportion and a jacket ends where it should on you. The plus size fur coats collection is here, and the plus size guide covers which shapes flatter.

What the Price Is Made Of

A jacket needs far fewer skins than a full-length, which is why it is the least costly way to own new mink. After that, four things set the price: the grade of the skins, how they were worked (let-out costs more than horizontal), the trim (a fox collar, a leather belt, a hood), and the hours of matching and finishing. Last season’s pieces and one-offs go to the fur clearance page at the same quality, and an estate mink, cleaned and checked in our workroom, is another door in.

There is a third: the mink already hanging in a family closet. A restyle turns a dated full-length into a jacket you will actually wear, cut and fitted to you.

See It on Yourself First

Cropped or hip-length, black or blush: those are the decisions people get wrong from a photograph of someone else, and they are what our virtual fur try-on is for. Upload a picture of yourself taken straight on in good light, pick any jacket on the site, and it appears on you in about a minute, so you can see where a cropped hem lands on your own body before you ask for a quote. It is free, needs no account, and everyone gets three try-ons a day.

The styler can change the background to Paris in the snow, Central Park or a fine restaurant, and add boots or a pocketbook, so you see the jacket where you would wear it. Every picture keeps a small credit line at the bottom. It is honest about shape and colour, and it cannot tell you how the fur feels; that, and the final fit, are settled at a fitting in our New York workroom.

Keeping It

A jacket gets more wear than any other fur, so look after it between outings: a broad padded hanger, air around it, never plastic, and no heat, sunlight or perfume. If it gets wet in the snow, shake it out and let it dry at room temperature, away from a radiator. Each spring it goes into cold storage, and how to store fur explains why a closet in July does the damage a winter never will.

Questions

Is a mink jacket warm enough for winter?

For most of it, yes. Mink is dense and stops the wind, and a hip-length jacket with a stand collar or a hood, worn over a sweater, covers an ordinary New York winter day. For long walks in deep cold, a stroller or a full-length covers the legs as well. See the mink strollers.

Can a mink coat be made into a jacket?

Yes. A restyle shortens a full-length or a stroller into a jacket, re-cuts the shoulders and sleeves to today’s shape and fits it to you, provided the leather is still supple, which we check first. Fur restyling.

What do you wear with a mink jacket?

Jeans and boots by day, a dress or tailored trousers at night. A cropped jacket wants a high waist; a hip-length one goes over almost anything, which is why we suggest it as a first fur. Try one on your own photo.

Every piece is made and fitted in our New York workroom, where we have been cutting mink since 1870. See the mink jackets, or try one on your own photo first.

A sable coat is the most expensive fur we sell and the lightest to wear, and the two facts are connected: the skins are small, scarce and silky, and a great many of them, hand-matched, go into one garment. This is what we tell a first-time buyer in our New York workroom: what Russian sable is, how to judge it, which length to start with, what the colours mean, and what you are paying for.

Below: what sable is, judging the fur, jacket, stroller or full-length, colour, sable against mink, chinchilla and fox, men’s and plus size, fit, the price, and how to see a piece on yourself before you decide.

What Sable Is

Sable is a small animal of the Siberian forests, a cousin of the marten, and nearly all the skins worth making a garment from are Russian. The finest come from the Barguzin region east of Lake Baikal: dark, dense and silky, with the silver-tipped guard hairs that collectors look for and no dye house has ever copied. Most Russian sable is wild rather than farmed, and the best skins are sold at auction, so the supply changes every season and has grown scarcer of late, as we explained in why chinchilla, lynx and sable went up.

Two other names turn up in shops. Golden sable is Russian sable in its pale amber shade, the one we see least often. Canadian sable is a different animal, the American marten: a shorter, less silky hair at a far lower price, often dyed to pass for its Russian cousin; honest fur, but not the same thing, and the label should say which. Sable’s place at the top of the ladder is in the most expensive furs in the world, and the two great furs sit side by side in sable vs mink.

How to Judge Sable

Run your hand against the fur and then with it. Good sable feels like silk both ways, with no coarseness in the guard hair, and it springs back the moment you lift your palm. Hold it to the light: the colour should run deep and even from skin to skin, with the silver tips catching as it moves. A piece that looks patchy from across the room was matched in a hurry, and matching is most of the work. Our buying guide for every fur walks through the same test.

Then lift it. Sable is lighter than any fur of its warmth, and a full-length piece should sit on the shoulders like a cardigan. Most of our jackets are worked in horizontal bands of whole skins; the full-length pieces run the skins vertically, which takes more of them and more hours. Everything we make in it is in the sable coats and jackets collection.

Jacket, Stroller or Full-Length

Our advice to a first-time buyer is to start with a jacket. It gives you the fur at a fraction of what a full-length costs, it goes over jeans on an ordinary Tuesday, and it is the piece you will wear most. A cropped jacket, a hip-length with a belt, a wide shawl collar: these are the three newest sable jackets and the shapes we are asked for first.

A stroller is our word for a length between the hip and mid-thigh: it covers a dress, gets in and out of a taxi without a fight, and is the length most New Yorkers live in. Full-length, mid-calf to the ankle, is the sable of the photographs: the warmest, the most formal, and the one that takes the most skins. A hood replaces a hat on the coldest nights; the hooded pieces also sit with our hooded furs.

Colour

Sable is not dyed, so the colour is the skin’s own. The darkest Barguzin skins read as near-black across a room and show their silver up close; the browns run from tortoiseshell to chestnut; the pale amber of golden sable turns heads in daylight. Dark is the classic choice; golden suits fair colouring and anyone who wants the fur noticed. Both are in the sable collection, and both can be tried on your own photograph below.

Sable Against Mink, Chinchilla and Fox

A mink coat is the fur most people buy first, and for good reason: it is denser, harder-wearing and a fraction of the price. Sable is lighter, silkier and warmer for its weight, and it is bought after mink rather than instead of it. If you want a dark, sleek, everyday piece, our mink buying guide is the one to read; a mink jacket with a sable collar is a way to have both.

Chinchilla is the one fur softer than sable, blue-grey and delicate, a piece for evenings rather than a winter of daily wear. A fox fur coat is the opposite of sable in every way: long guard hair, real volume, and a presence that announces itself, where sable is the quiet one. Sable is also the finest trim there is: see the sable tuxedo on a Blackglama mink.

Men’s and Plus Size

Men wear sable, and have since the tsars. The men’s Russian sable below is cut three-quarter length with a man’s shoulder and a longer sleeve, to go over jeans as easily as a suit, and the rest of our men’s fur coats, in mink, fox, chinchilla and sable, have their own page and their own buying guide.

Plus size is made, not scaled. We cut to your measurements, with the shoulder, the sleeve and the hem in proportion, so a sable hangs as lightly on a size 20 as on a size 8. The plus size fur coats collection is here, and the plus size guide covers which shapes flatter.

How It Should Fit

Sable is so light that a poor fit has no weight to hide behind. The shoulder seam sits on the point of your shoulder, not beyond it; the sleeves reach the wrist bone with room for a sweater; a full-length hem clears the ground in the shoes you will wear with it. The rest is altered at a fitting in our workroom, which is how every piece leaves the shop.

What the Price Is Made Of

Four things set it: the grade of the skins, with dark Barguzin at the top; how many a piece needs, which is why a jacket costs a fraction of a full-length; how closely they were matched; and the trim and the hours of work. Because Russian sable is mostly wild and sold at auction, the price moves with each season’s supply, which is the story behind the recent increases. An estate sable, cleaned and checked in our workroom, is the other door in, and a restyle turns an inherited full-length into a jacket you will actually wear.

See It on Yourself First

Dark or golden, jacket or full-length: those are the two decisions people get wrong from a photograph, and they are exactly what our virtual fur try-on is for. Upload a picture of yourself taken straight on in good light, pick any piece on the site, and it appears on you in about a minute, so you can see a Barguzin jacket against a golden stroller on your own body before you ask for a quote. It is free, needs no account, and everyone gets three try-ons a day.

The styler can change the background to a snowy street, a fine restaurant or a winter wedding, so you see the sable where you would wear it. Every picture keeps a small credit line at the bottom. The final fit and colour are settled at a fitting in our New York workroom.

Keeping It

Sable is not fragile, but its leather is finer than mink’s, so care counts for more: a broad padded hanger with air around it, never plastic, and no heat, sunlight or perfume. Each spring it goes into cold storage, where the cold keeps the leather supple and the moths out, and a furrier looks it over every year or two. Insure it, too: appraising and insuring a fur explains how, and how to store fur covers the rest.

Questions

What is Barguzin sable?

The finest grade of Russian sable, from the Barguzin region east of Lake Baikal in Siberia: the darkest, densest and silkiest skins, with the silver-tipped guard hairs that no dye has ever copied. See our Barguzin pieces.

Is sable warmer than mink?

Warmer for its weight. Mink is denser and harder-wearing; sable gives the same warmth at a fraction of the weight, which is why people who own one wear it more than anything else they have. Sable vs mink.

Why is sable so expensive?

The skins are small, mostly wild and scarce, sold at auction, and a full-length piece needs several dozen of them matched for colour and silver. A jacket needs far fewer, which is why we tell first-time buyers to start there. See the sable jackets.

Every piece is made and fitted in our New York workroom, where we have been cutting fur since 1870. See the sable coats and jackets, or try one on your own photo first.

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. Everyone gets three try-ons a day, so a family’s worth of colourways takes a few sittings. 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.

Everyone gets three a day, signed up or not. If you want your looks kept and the full-size picture emailed to you, 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. 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

Everyone gets three try-ons a day, signed up or not. The styler is free for everyone too: change the background and put yourself anywhere, a Paris street in the snow, Central Park, a ski slope, a winter wedding, and add accessories, from sunglasses to a handbag. Give us an email address — one six-digit code, no password, nothing to manage — and your looks are kept, with the full-size picture sent to your inbox.

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.