Virtual Fur
Furs were the first clothes,
stripped off the same beasts that provided food and bone tools. Fur clothes
were strictly utilitarian until people learned to spin thread fine enough to
weave into cloth soft enough to drape around the body. Once that happened,
maybe about 7,000 years ago, fur worn by people became both a luxury and a
symbol of wealth and power, and it still is. Fortunately or not, we can never
go back to those artless Paleolithic days.
But after
millennia of arrogance laced with sensuality for some and awe laced with rancor
for most, fur has been tamed and put in its place. Men and women swathed in
seal and sable are no longer obvious lords of the world, trailing intimidating
allusions to Renaissance princes or Russian czars and their consorts; instead,
they look faintly out-of-date. And those spectacular women in tailored leopard
coats, still found in old movies, have vanished from real life ever since the
idea took hold that exotic fur garments were not just too luxurious but also
bad for the soul and bad for the planet. These days, the wearer of a big coat
made wholly of fur seems almost to be hiding inside an animal costume,
disguised as a member of an endangered species, as it were.
What looks suitable now is fur in piquant traces,
decorative little sealskin scarves or squirrel trim for hoods or neat fox
collars for coats. All these are very attractive, and marginal enough to
suggest the wearer's superiority to fashion altogether, in accordance with the
current style. In the same spirit, they can all be jolly fakes. Real is fine;
fake is essentially no different. That's because textile technology has finally
produced a range of synthetic fluff that vies with fur in visual beauty and
tactile lusciousness. Some of this synthetic fiber is wrought into velvet and
its cousins plush and chenille, materials known to be man-made even when made
of silk. In their company, man-made chinchilla and mink don't seem in the least
false.
Best of
all, now we can have no fur but the image of fur, pictured skins of the rarest
kind with which we can enjoy ourselves in a range of materials. Fur has solved
its social and economic identity problem by leaping out of nature and into the
virtual-reality third millennium. So we can have plastic hair clips or cotton
potholders in zebra skin, vinyl-covered hassocks in giraffe pelt, soft corduroy
sofa cushions or tough twill suitcases in tiger fur, and nylon zipper jackets
in Dalmatian spots for 4-year-olds. Cheetah spots merge with giraffe spots on
bright green or purple Lycra stretch pants. I have a tawny silk blouse printed
with a clever blend of black lace and leopard skin. In it I can vaguely
resemble a leopard wearing see-through lingerie, a nice mélange of warring
erotic symbols.
Iacquired this blouse soon after my adventures
last August. I was in Botswana, looking at the indigenous wild beasts in their
living flesh and fur, and I came to understand why leopard is the most
desirable of all the fur prints for clothes. It's because of the way a real
leopard behaves. All the African animals we saw--spotted, striped, or plain,
wart hogs and wildebeests no less than elephants and antelopes, zebras and
giraffes--were beautiful, with the integrity of physical design and movement
they share with other animals. But among them, it's the leopard who seems to
feel it.
We saw only one (they're
discreet)--a female, we were told. We watched her emerge from a thicket into a
sunlit clearing, and pose. There's no other word for it. She stood perfectly
still, head up, tail in a majestic arc, while we stared entranced for a full 30
seconds. Then she paced slowly off as if on a runway, each perfect paw straight
in front of the other, haunches delicately swaying, tail holding its curve,
peerless coat glittering in the sun. Our guide said that only the leopard walks
like that--the lions just shamble and clump along. Of course we deeply loved
and respected all those heavy-footed lions, and all those high-shouldered
cheetahs, too. But the leopard is another thing; and all things considered, we
want to be like her.
People have felt this way
for a very long time. A week ago I was looking among the Egyptian antiquities
in the renovated Louvre, and my eye was caught by a small painted limestone
panel from the tomb of Princess Nefertiabet, who lived and died in the reign of
her kinsman Cheops, 2590-2565 B.C. The young princess is shown seated before a
low table, her hands engaged with some objects and her body clad in a long,
clinging, one-shouldered Thierry Mugler dress entirely covered with leopard
spots. Well, well, well. This was no real animal's pelt. Leopard skins do
appear frequently in ancient Egyptian art, but as privileged ritual gear, slung
over the shoulders of priests with paws and tail dangling down. No, by golly,
here was a 4,500-year-old leopard-print dress, worthy of being worn for
eternity in the Realm of the Dead. I turned my head and saw the woman next to
me wearing a leopard-print scarf, and I felt a little dizzy. You couldn't
exactly say that leopard print is always in fashion. But you would have to
admit that it's always in force.
