Mink fur
Mink fur is a type of fur obtained from the mink and turned into a commodity.
In the fur trade today, mink fur refers to the fur of the offspring of the American mink, while the offspring of the European mink are strictly protected by federal species protection regulations. Animals taken from the wild may no longer be imported for trade. Wild mink furs traded in some countries generally continue to come from North America, although the mink has also become naturalized in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe.
The pelts of female minks are smaller, lighter, and have shorter hair than male pelts, which are about one-third larger.
In terms of durability, meaning resistance to wear and hide stability, mink is now considered the most rewarding fur material. In the past, otter fur, especially sea otter fur, was considered the most durable type of fur. Sheepskin, which is also very durable, is difficult to compare and is therefore not taken into account.
Since World War II, mink fur has dominated the international fur market and “left a very distinct mark on it.” Until around the end of the 20th century, mink was the fur most commonly imitated by other types of fur. These were traded under names such as mink-muskrat, mink-marmot, mink-weasel, etc.
History of mink in fashion
Little is known about the use of mink and their fur in early human history; there are no bone finds that could provide any clues, or at least none that have been definitively attributed to mink. The furs traded by German merchants as far as Smolensk in the 14th century also included minks. In 2002, a fully skinned mink pelt dating from the 5th century BC was found in a salt mine on the Dürrnberg in Hallein. Its origin was thought to be “possibly the steppe zones of Eurasia.” Since at least the Middle Ages, mink fur has been used mainly for fur linings and trimmings.In the late Middle Ages and especially during the Renaissance, fur scarves made from the skins of martens, known as zibellini, first appeared in fashion. It was probably only after this fashion had temporarily gone out of style, and presumably unjustly so, that they came to be called flea furs. It was assumed that the women who wore them had used them as flea traps. The fashion of these naturalized fur scarves, today known as fur chokers, reached its peak from the period before 1900 through the 1940s. However, they were still quite fashionable even after the Second World War. Whether the marten-like mink, alongside sable, pine marten, and stone marten, was already made into zibellini during the Renaissance is difficult to determine on the basis of old images. In modern times, however, mink took a leading position among the types of fur used for fur collars, alongside fox. Around 1900, clothing catalogues in Europe and America featured a considerable selection of scarves, collars, and muffs in all types of fur.
In 1682, the furriers of Schwäbisch Gmünd did not want to allow master furrier Melchior Beringer from Aalen to sell caps made of mink fur, at the annual fair alongside other fur products. After consulting with colleagues in the cities of Nuremberg, Nördlingen, Dinkelsbühl, and Esslingen, they had to admit that the Aalen furrier's behavior could not be prohibited.
Its use for inner linings, collars, and trimmings since the Middle Ages can only be assumed; mink is explicitly mentioned for the period after 1830, a resurgence of men's fur coats, and for 1858 for trimmings on plush and velvet coats. However, as early as 1851, it was mentioned that North American mink pelts were being processed in immense numbers, mainly for women's clothing. The dominance of the mink jacket and mink coat in fur fashion over recent decades began around 1870, following the invention of the fur sewing machine. The Victoria and Albert Museum's collection includes a mink jacket, still made of wild mink, in a dolman cut, from the mid-1880s, when it was still unusual for fur to be worked with the hair facing outwards, except as trim. A dolman, half jacket, half cape, with wide sleeves, was a popular garment in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the cut of this mink coat is typical: hip-length with long sloping ends at the front and a shaped back. This unusual item is said to have been sold in London by furriers working for the Hudson's Bay Company.
It now became economically feasible to process mink pelts into narrow strips by means of letting-out. At the Paris World Exposition in 1900, Révillon Frères presented the first large-scale ready-made garments made from let-out mink, including a floor-length coat made from 164 Canadian mink pelts and one otter pelt. However, these pieces were still sewn entirely by hand, which for this coat alone required 1,400 hours of work by the seamstresses. The fur-sewing machines driven by foot pedals initially caught so much fur in the seams that they were not suitable for sewing the narrow strips, but were “usable only for coarser work, especially for the production of fur linings.”
In the first decade of the 20th century, the Native Americans of North America began regularly hunting mink, which today—coming largely from breeding—dominates high-end fur fashion. In the early 19th century, fur traders did buy mink pelts, but only to avoid upsetting their suppliers, and then set the pelts aside as undesirable. By the end of the 1920s, the American mink had become, at least in the United States, the principal fur featured in fashion shows.
In contrast to letting-out are full-pelt processing and half-pelt processing, in which the pelts are used largely unchanged, in their natural shape. The cost-effective transverse processing of pelts was developed in the 1920s. Apparently, however, it had not become widely established at the time; in 1961 a trade journal reported under the headline “Manufacturing process for mink coats 50% cheaper!” that with this supposedly new method only five weeks of labor were required to produce a coat instead of three. This announcement reportedly caused considerable stir within professional circles. First-quality mink coats would now cost only £799 instead of £1,600, and lower-quality coats would cost as little as £485.
The basis for fur becoming more widely available to society was laid by the now advanced mink breeding industry, which by 1920 was able to supply large quantities of mink pelts. In 1945, farmed mink still didn’t play a significant role in the global fur trade. By 1950, its share had already risen to 10%, from 1955 to 1960 to 25 to 30% and from 1965 to 1970 to over 70% of total fur sales. In the context of the postwar economic boom, the Federal Republic of Germany developed into the leading consumer country for furs starting in 1950. Although there were soon quite considerable mink farms in the GDR, their pelts were exported as a source of foreign currency until the end, and there was no GDR mink fashion of its own.
Initially, Persian lamb was the main material used in West Germany, but with rising incomes in the 1970s, it was replaced by mink, which was an even higher status symbol. While Persian lamb still led the way in terms of numbers in 1969 in West Germany, based on fur import figures, it was now surpassed by mink in terms of value.
In her book “Pelze”, Marie Louise Steinbauer points out two specific circles of mink enthusiasts: “Such an ‘expensive-smelling’ white mink soon became part of the standard attire of a stripper with a reputation … Thus the ‘priestesses of Venus,’ as they were poetically called in antiquity, like to protect themselves with warm furs. They have a particular fondness for fur jackets, or at least very short coats. As for the rest, they display the entire animal world: muskrat, nutria, karakul, rabbit, the successful ones mink.” For these women, the furs did not necessarily have to be new; the first second-hand fur shops emerged, and a used mink coat cost between 1,500 and 3,000 marks at a Hamburg auction house, plus a 15% fee.
After, twenty years later, nearly every German woman who wanted to and could afford it owned one or more mink jackets and coats, market saturation was reached as prices began to fall. For lower income groups, large quantities of clothing made from mink paws, heads, tails, and other parts were sold by specialist retailers, but above all by department stores and textile wholesalers. The aura of exclusivity as a symbol of regained prosperity was gone. Other types of fur had meanwhile pushed mink into the background, and a series of warm winters and protests by parts of the animal rights movement did the rest, causing fur sales in Germany to decline significantly. Despite historically high deliveries, the price of mink fur has risen so much due to strong demand from Russia and Asia that it is now rarely sold on the non-Russian European market.
In men’s fashion, mink made its appearance quite late and mostly half-heartedly. It can be assumed that since the Middle Ages it was always used to some extent—alongside other types of fur—for linings and trimmings among the upper social classes. In her history of men's fur, Italian author Anna Municchi mentions mink for the first time in 1952, when Brioni created the “Schelm”, a tuxedo with black mink trim. Other designers also began to take an interest in men's fur. With the trend toward unisex fashion, the full mink coat became increasingly acceptable, at least for fashion-conscious men. Jole Veneziani, “queen of the industry, who has spared no effort in women's fashion, deliberately uses only very discreet, exquisite, and moderate paletots for men's wardrobes: double-breasted coats made of dark saga mink, crafted from whole pelts.” At Dior, there was a Chesterfield coat made of American Lunaraine mink. Intentionally eye-catching was the performance of the American entertainer Liberace in a white, floor-length mink coat made with four flounces. Despite this, men clearly preferred the more rustic types of fur, such as wolf, raccoon, or nutria.Among the classics that remain popular to this day are the mink blouson in the style of a pilot's jacket, the Russian ushanka earflap hat made of mink fur, and the coat lined with mink or velvet mink.
With the fur braiding technique developed before 1990, accessories made of mink and mink tails also became fashionable again after 2000. These included, among other items, scarves, fur stoles, and vests, which are characterized by a novel, flowing appearance similar to that of knitwear.