WASHINGTON - Sandra Berry throws on a fur cape without looking at the price tag. "Oh, it feels great," she purrs, charging it to her credit card. She pulls the wrap tighter in the chilly lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel, where a temporary fur salon is serving inauguration guests.
It takes five minutes to sell this ... mink? Sable? Chinchilla?
"I don't even know what it is," the Detroit visitor says. "I just know I need it."
(For the record, it's fox. And the price? Twice her guess of, "I don't know - $2,000?")
Snow was falling in the capital yesterday, but it was the flurry of fur coats, hats and earmuffs that proved the real force of nature. Fur salons around the city reported brisk emergency sales, concierges described hunting down fur shops to find loaner minks, and visitors who had traveled light were having their full-length mink coats express-mailed to their hotels.
At the presidential inauguration today, amid predictions of freezing winds and possible flurries, the crowd will be thick with Republicans in fur coats, ponchos, hats, scarves. By the evening's balls, those animals will change shape, becoming capelets, stoles, boas.
Shortly after the 2004 election, President Bush declared his win a mandate, and now his supporters are reveling in Washington with one of their own: to unabashedly display their pelts. To some, it's a rebellion against political correctness. To others, an expression of loyalty to Republican trickle-down economics. To more, a chance to enjoy a fashion moment.
Purchase in a hurry
A handful, like Berry, are buying their furs on the run. The wife of the chief lobbyist for General Motors snatched hers up at a mini-salon by the entrance of the Ritz hotel. The impromptu shop, open only for inauguration week, is stocked with Saks Fifth Avenue furs.
Berry, who won't watch the inaugural parade outside (she'll be indoors at a Pennsylvania Avenue party), bought her cape while the hotel's front doors swung open and gusts of cold air and exhaust blew in from the limo stand. She hardly seemed fazed, though, reporting that she needed the wrap because she had left her mink at home.
To other revelers, there's an even better reason to wear fur: because they can.
"It's cold, yes," says Linda Knight, a Texan in a white mink who was sightseeing with friends, "but that's not why we're wearing our fur. We're wearing it because we want to!"
