Monkey Fur Success (Coat of My Dreams)

Salutations, friends! How's tricks? Not much new here in this life of Riley except for one startling development of a few weeks ago. Would you believe....COULD YOU believe...that I finally have a monkey fur coat of my very own??

Let's just cut straight to the goods here, there's no time to spare!

Just as I'd put my oversized foot down about buying more fur coats (and actually passed up a mink or two under $50...who even AM I any more?), an amazing vintage-buying opportunity popped up out of the blue to pick up this 1940's monkey fur coat. Was the coat in question extraordinarily beautiful? Yes, ma'am. Were the terms of the sale extraordinarily, pinch-me-I'm-dreaming reasonable? Oh hayyyull yes they were. And the seller was super nice/prompt, to boot. You'd better believe I jumped on it quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and now, I have the Marlene Dietrich jacket of my dreams I first mentioned here almost exactly two years ago (how the time does fly!). My only problem at present is trying to finagle an invitation to somewhere swank enough to show this sucker off (though...at this point, I'm pretty sure I would take any opportunity to give these guy a whirl...as I become the most glamorous girl the Gallatin Road Sonic has ever seen).

Check it out:

I love the white-on-black, Cruella de Ville ness of the color, and the pelt is so much like human hair it's almost creepy. How it hangs! Look at those boxy shoulders! Chic, chic.

If you don't remember from the previous post, monkey fur coats had a few separate rise and falls in popularity, ranging from the Victorian era, to the 1920's, to the 1940's...just about every twenty years there seemed to be a resurgence in interest in the weird, wild texture until colobus monkeys became endangered towards the end of the forties' and a halt was put to their use in fine furs. Today, glad to hear, the little guys are doing fine, but the scarcity of the coats make them super rare. Not to say that they're not still a buzzing about! I saw an all black variety on Cookie Lyons in an episode of Empire the other day and decided my life's work was done...to

Some monkey fur coat news articles collected from Google News Archives for your perusal:

1960

1940 (l), 1933

1922

1915

1927

1922

And just for good measure, these gorgeous gals... I want that HAT, Lord, I want that hat.



Sorry for the brief update, but I'm telling you, my time is not my own these days!

What do you think? Have you scored any bucket list items off your must-have vintage dream collection? What's the best offer you've ever gotten as a result of a random blog post/friend of a friend/happenstance? Let's chat!!

I've got to run, but have a fantastic Tuesday, and we'll be talking again before long! :)