Fur never goes out of style in the outdoor world – Seymour Tribune

David Green of Anchorage, Alaska, grandson of the founder of a 103-year-old furrier business, models a fur coat.
Lew Freedman | The Tribune
Name the animal, lynx, fox, raccoon, wolf, or other, and David Green Master Furrier probably has a coat, jacket, or hat made of that type of fur.
Lew Freedman | The Tribune
Fur coats of all types were for sale at the recent Safari Club International convention in Nashville, Tennessee, costing several thousands of dollars.
Lew Freedman | The Tribune
A landmark Anchorage, Alaska business, David Green Master Furrier is a regular at Safari Club International’s annual convention.
Lew Freedman | The Tribune
NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The fur coats lined up on display racks were black, brown, whitish, beige, the color of animals who previously wore them basically as skin.
Passersby were spellbound, pausing to feel the softness of the furs, to admire the volume of the furs, to try on a mix of furs. And yes, to spend several thousand dollars to buy a fur.
Except for eons ago, when mankind dressed in fur and nothing but fur because no one had sewing machines and other cloth wasn’t available, and you went out and hunted what you needed, fur mostly has been for the wealthy, a status symbol of prosperity.
High above the huge collection of furs hung a sign reading “David Green, Master Furrier, Anchorage, Alaska, since 1922.”
That David Green of a business widely known across Alaska, has passed away, but descendant Greens, including another David Green, the grandson, worked the floor at the recent Safari Club International convention manning one of the largest booths of any type among the nearly 1,000 exhibitors.
“We have everything here,” said saleswoman Hadley Carter, who works for the firm in Anchorage, too. “Everything you can dream of. We make dreams come true.”
Watching eyes light up with the purchase of a fur coat, jacket, hat made of lynx, mink, raccoon, timber wolf, wolverine, sable, beaver, fox, it was easy to read the truth of the statement among buyers, or those receiving gifts.
Sonya Reidel, 51, of Alberta, had just acquired a lynx coat from her husband Ryan and was excited.
“It’s beautiful,” Sonya Reidel said. “It’s my first fur.”
When she was a little kid, maybe six years old, she said, her mother had a fur coat and when there were family gatherings and everyone tossed their outer wear on a bed, she sometimes sneaked into the bedroom, found that coat and snuggled up with it.
Reidel wondered, this day, if that memory had not subconsciously drawn her to this new coat.
Ironically, Ryan Reidel had recently taken a hunting trip and come across a lone lynx spontaneously. Rather than shoot a rifle, he shot a camera and had a picture of the animal.
“Maybe,” he said, “this the one I saved.”
Mountain men set the tone
It can be argued America was built on the backs of the mountain men trappers of the early 1800s who pushed their way westward into uncharted areas of the West.
Roughly between 1807, after Lewis Clark’s expedition, and the 1840s, the hardy breed struck out into parts unknown to trap for beaver and live off the land. They blazed unmarked trails and reported back to civilization at times, showing the way for eventual settlers, while simultaneously making a living by supplying the market for fur.
Among the most famous of those mountain men, who did wear their own fur clothing, were Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, John Colter, who split from the Lewis Clark excursion as it ended and stayed in the West, Hugh Glass, Joe Meek and Jedidiah Smith. The 1972 movie, “Jeremiah Johnson,” played by Robert Redford, went a long way to cement the image of the mountain men.
Despite the harshness of their solo existences, the legends of many, intermingled with tales of their annual Fur Rendezvous get-togethers, persist in sometimes romantic fashion.
Over the centuries, fur was favorably viewed in most countries, and especially among the monied, until such organizations as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) launched protests against the wearing of fur, sometimes splashing blood on the coats.
Yet people still wish to buy and wear fur and there are regulated trapping seasons in many states. Fur markets can be followed online and prices tracked.
One place where there seemed to be extremely limited support for boycotts of fur was Alaska. In fact, each February, Anchorage hosts its own modern-day Fur Rendezvous and the parody phrase “People for the Eating of Tasty Animals,” opposing PETA, is popular.
The Greens have persevered for more than a century and make Safari Club’s event a regular sales stop. One day, 22 years ago, a tourist wandered into the Anchorage store and told David Green (the grandson) about how his product and the buying market at this convention were a dead-on match. The hunting clientele, the outdoorsmen and the furs would be as natural together as peanut butter and jelly.
“He said, ‘You’ve got to go,’” Green said. The scout’s tip was absolutely correct. “It’s perfect.” Green said the fur business is so good at Safari Club that if he could do two such equivalent shows monthly year-round, he would not even need to run his store in Anchorage.
Not everyone comes to the convention with the plan to spend thousands of dollars on a coat, so the impulse buy can break the budget.
One fellow from Texas named Jayson bought an otter coat the day before, but even after trying on a $775 otter hat that made him look quite rakish, he could not make himself pull the trigger on a second item.
Or a third, it might be said, since his wife Whitney was decked out in a new mink jacket that she planned to debut at home at the mid-February San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo.
“I love fur,” she said. “It’s cozy and beautiful.”
A family business
The business may be more than 100 years old, but several of the people working at David Green furriers at Safari Club, were named Green, with later-generation connections to the founder.
David Green, the grandson, supervised, but he also discussed fur types with men. Fur coats may be more closely identified with women, but men, some of them at this event who are hunters, like the look for themselves.
In the 2015 movie, “The Hateful Eight,” Kurt Russell wears a buffalo coat for most of the film. Russell admitted the coat was so heavy it bothered his back after a while. The appearance, however, was spectacular, and fellow actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was smitten. He had one made for himself in Thermopolis, Wyoming, and flew in to pick it up.
In Nashville, a male attendee sought to buy his significant other a fur coat souvenir, though she was not present. Shani Green, David’s wife, acted as a stand-in, trying on coat after coat while the potential buyer remained on the phone transmitting the scene— until his gal in North Carolina approved of one.
“I’ve been doing it all day,” Shani Green said of her modeling.
While other booths sold some fur, nobody else at the convention had such a vast cross-section of available coats, hats, pocketbooks, scarves and the like. Or Teddy Bears.
Yes, Teddy Bears. Kids were not overlooked. For between $100 and $200, the furriers offered the sale of stuffed animal-like dudes made out of various genuine furs.
“We started out doing a big Teddy Bear,” David Green said. These were much smaller, a foot-or-so in size, to be cuddled by small children. “It’s from left-over materials from making other pieces. People love them. We have fun with it.”
Apparently, so do the youngsters, who may get stuck on fur when they are young and grow up to desire buying a $10,000 fur coat.

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