Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1879 — Fashionable Furs. [ARTICLE]

Fashionable Furs.

The Siberian silver gray fox, which has been the most fashionable fur, as well as the highest-priced in the market, is this season the best standard fur for trimming dress cloaks and making sets. The prices have advanced, inasmuch as all kinds of fashionable fur is at a premium this fall. The skins are about the size of our American foxes, ami cost from sixty to one hundred dollars each, according to the age of the animal and the shade of gray in dark parts of the fur. It is unnecessary to add, perhaps, that this fur is tipped with a beautiful silver tint, as those familiar with the fur are aware of this fact. The sets cost all the way from fifty to ninety dollars, according to the shade arid softness of the fur. The trimmings for outside garments are cut from the back, and muffs and collars from the flanks, as in the lynx skin. Grebe collars and muffs are to be worn for evening dress to opera and theater. These are made from the breast of the birds, the center of which is pure white, and shaded off in tintings of golden brown and gray, the latter being much more costly and.desirable than the former shadings. The best and most expensive grebes come from Geneva, and the more common grades from the southern portions of California. These sets arc very much worn in Paris and London, with evening dress of black satin and velvet, to theater and opera, but seldom ever seen for carriage or street wear. Alaska sable or black martin is again included in the list of fashionable trimming furs. It is much used for trimming seal-skin sacques, and is cut in widths from four to six inches.

The skins of wildcats found in mountainous regions and forests of Northern Germany are employed to considerable extent in lining garments for carriages and traveling purposes. The color of the fur is a deep, rich brown, and is too short to be sufficiently ornamental as a trimming fur or for making sets, although the hairs are very tine and soft and the skin quite tough, probably like our domestic cats, which are said to possess nine lives. No doubt these felines many times elude the snares set by German hunters in their native mountains by the same dexterity with which our domestic cat escapes the boot-jack thrown by the exasperated listeners to their midnight howls. Chinchilla fur is considered very appropriate for sets and trimmings upon garments worn by misses and very young lailies. This animal is much smaller than most people imagine, being about the size of our gray squirrels, and shaped very much like a rat. The best skins of this kind come from Peru. There are two distinct colors, shaded from the ground to the hips. The pure gray grounds, very dark upon the back, are by far the best and softest in quality. The inferior grades are a sort of reddish brown upon the back, and shaded on to something of the suggestion of ecru tint. The set ranges from fifteen to forty dollars, according to color and fineness of the fur. The African tigers have this year succeeded in developing their spotted skins into fashionable nirs for sets and trimmings. So those of our ladies who do not aspire to assuming the lion’s skin can, with the sanction of the supreme goddess, wander about in tiger skins, like gentle lambs in wolves’ clothing. Some of these skins are spotted gray and white, and others in tan color, silver gray and white, according

to the different species to which they belong. The sealskin garments are destined to be more in vogue than for many yean. They are made both in sacques and dolmans, and also in the new garment, first produced in silk fur-lmeu goods, called the Mercedes. This is a sort of surplice dolman, circular in form, and is made very ample and long. The Alaska and Shetland seals are both used, but the Alaska is considered much the better wearing fur, and retains the dye longer than the Shetland. There m less difference in the price of the two qualities than in the wear. Pincked South Sea otter and plain and pointed beaver furs are extensively used for the trimming of sealskin garments and making muffs to match. These furs are also much used in trimming silk, fur-lined circulars. The pointed beaver is made so by a process of tying white hairs upon the roots of the fur upon the skin. It is all executed by hand, and is a very delicate and intricate piece of work. The difference in the price of pointed and plain beaver amounts to about five dollars in one skin. The Hudson Bay beaver is the principal kind used in the trimming of sealskins. The long seal dolmans, beaver trimmed, range in price from two dollars and seventy-five cents to four dollars each, and the sacones from one dollar and seventy-five cents to two dollars and fifty cents. There are some novelties in fur trimmings which are worth mentioning in this detailed account of fashionable furs. One kind was trimmed upon a long carriage garment of heavy plushfinished beaver cloth. The fur is called marmaluke, and grows, upon an animal known as the Australian sheep. It is a kind or a cross between wool and fur. It comes in mixed colors of black, dark gray, and silver, and is used just as imported, in its natural colors. It is about medium in regard toprice, and will evidently obtain great favor for ordinary wear. The French fox, which is a deep chestnut brown, after being prepared in France by a process of indelible dyeing, and tipped with silver about the depth of halt an inch, is another novelty in fur. The are effected bv an electric process, and when completed the fur would never be known from the natural skins, so artistically is it performed. The hair is very long and soft, and retains the beautiful luster given it by the dye. In its natural state it would be ignored, on account of the dingy, grizzly color, which seems out of place in shch fine, soft quality of fur. The animal is about the size of the Siberian silver fox, and the quality of the fur is very similar. Siberian squirrel in its natural color, gray and white, and real ermine, are the principal lining furs for dolmans and circulars. They come all the way from S2O to SSO for a whole lining. Russian sable is one of the old and also the new furs. It may be properly called a standard quality, and is next in price to the Siberian silver fox. In style of make the sets are considerably changed in shape of neck mufflers. This season they are cut with a flat, round, or pointed collar, and round boa ends. The muffs are very small and trimmed in fancy and colored ribbons. —N. Y. Star.