and that’s how you get into the Hall of Fame.
When it comes to clothing, I’m generally an equal opportunist. Marc Jacobs, go ahead and wear that kilt. Givenchy, I love that you’ve got Kayne West sporting skirts. Andrej Pejik, you’re the prettiest man/girl in the game and you can wear whatever you like, even if that means digging through my closet for a pair of size two ladies leather pants. But this winter more than a few gentlemen parading around New York City have pushed my sartorial limits. Call me narrow-minded, but I am struggling with the idea of men in knee-length, old-ladies-who-lunch furs.
I have to wonder why any man wants to look like Zsa Zsa Gabor or a raggedy pimp.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up on the Upper East Side or as the daughter of a nineteenth century Russian oligarch, but the proliferation of this look has caught me off-guard. From a practical standpoint, I understand: furs are unequivocally warm. If I were a man, I might wonder why furs be reserved for the opposite sex (just as I wonder why women still only make roughly 77% of what men do). Poor Joe Namath certainly did when he bundled in coats made of furs on the sidelines of Jets games. This world is full of injustices that one struggles to grapple with, furs surely ranking high on the list. But when I view this trend purely from an aesthetic stance, I have to wonder why any man wants to look like Zsa Zsa Gabor or a raggedy pimp.
Understandably, there is nothing I can do to thwart the tides of fashion. I can only hope that the season of pressing up against a mountain of mink on the subway and inadvertently inhaling mouthfuls of sweat-laden yeti fur in the clubs comes to a close sometime soon. Because though fur is surely controversial, I am not entirely convinced it is unisex. *
*For any man who wants to fight me on this one, I’ll surely trade you my inherent female fur rights for that 23% difference in wages.–Jenny Bahn
