As Maureen Durwood tells it, she was wearing a fur coat on New York's fancy 57th Street a few years ago when a woman approached her, pointed to her coat and said, "If you had it to do over again, would you?
"You bet your sweet bippie, I would," Durwood snapped back."I buy furs all the time. I'm a fur fan. I think once you've worn fur - any fur - you can never wear anything else," says the Overland Park travel agent. "It's so warm."
Sandy Berkley, the wife of former Kansas City Mayor Richard Berkley, agrees. "When the styles change, you can alter them (fur coats,)" she says.
Durwood says no one is "wilder about animals" than she. Berkley, too, has been highly visible in her support of the Kansas City Zoo.
They are the kind of supportive consumers who are especially valued these days by a fur industry that is beginning to see increased sales after some lean times.
A plummeting economy and a series of highly visible and bitter animal-rights campaigns in the late 1980s and early '90s sent sales on a downward roll. Anti-'80s backlash against conspicuous consumption didn't help. Neither has urban crime.
From a peak of $1.8 billion in 1987 (the year the stock market took a dive), sales dropped to $1 billion in 1991, says Sandy Blye, executive director of the American Fur Industry Council, a New York public relations organization.
Furriers closed businesses. In 1989, designers such as Bill Blass and Carolina Herrera chose to give up fur licenses "for personal reasons." Some models, including Christie Brinkley, took public stances against fur.
But recently the decline has leveled off and figures have begun to edge up. Sales in the 1992-93 were $1.1 billion, a 10 percent rise over the year before, Blye said, and observers expect at least 10 percent or more for this season, despite a relatively warm winter so far in the Northeast. Stories in The New York Times proclaimed "Furs are back."
Roseanne Morrison, outerwear editor for Tobe Reports, a retail advisory, confirms furs are rebounding. Neiman Marcus, for example, did a fur mailing for the first time in awhile, she noted.
It's the economy, the fur people think. Consumer confidence is returning, and people with money have fewer qualms about spending it, say, for a good, warm mink coat, than they have had in recent times. Last winter was a frigid one in many parts of the country, and that's helped boost sales.
Some people think the extreme tactics of some animal-rights activists have diffused the impact. Karen Handel, the director of media relations for the Fur Information Council of America, said there was a "tremendous backlash" against animal activists. People are "fed up" with being told what to eat and what to wear, she said.
Seizing the moment of optimism, the Fur Council, a Washington organization of retail furriers, has inaugurated a $1.25 million advertising campaign. Built around the theme of fur as a fabric, it involves a flashing billboard in Times Square and 23 pages of print ads for slick fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Vanity Fair. Fur-clad models are depicted in a variety of settings and moods, including casual jeans.
Nonetheless, the idea of furs remains a highly volatile issue that invokes deep emotional responses on both sides of the political correctness issue. "Urban developers have killed more animals than furriers," declares an angry Myron Wang, an owner of Alaskan Fur Co. in Overland Park, Kan.
The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, the most militant of the activist groups, staged a "Fur is a drag" march through the New York fur district the day after Thanksgiving. The group, which says it has 400,000 U.S. members, also participated in a series of airport confrontations right before Christmas. Such methods have an impact.
Animal-rights groups and individuals vary considerably. The Humane Society of the United States, with 1.8 million members, has chosen to take a "positive" approach, said spokeswoman Helen Mitternight. "We just want the consumer to be educated about furs. We think that if you stop someone on the street and yell at them, you don't educate them very much. All you do is alienate them."
A variety of fur styles are selling, but mink still is the most popular and best investment because of its durability.
Mink prices dropped a few years ago when lowered demand caused a glut of skins on the market, industry sources said. You can buy a mink in some places for as low as $1,800, but prices are expected to start back up this year.
Because people now dress more casually than ever before, fur shoppers basically want versatility in furs. Women want "things they can wear all the time," said Missy Smart, the president of Alaskan Fur Co.
The company in suburban Kansas City diversified into leathers, cashmere and microfibers about two years ago and now boasts a fare that includes $400 car coats, $2,000 fur-lined Jeff Hamilton Chiefs' jackets as well as a sweeping chinchilla-trimmed mink.
Overall, technical advances have resulted in lightweight fluid furs, artfully mixed skins, colored furs and patterns such as argyles and hearts. For example, Lu Jouras of Kansas City said she recently bought a one-of-a-kind "firefly" coat in sheared beaver. She described it as colors going in a lot of different directions.
Sheared skins such as mink or beaver have become especially popular because they are lightweight and fabriclike.