Soft as Velvet: Sheared Mink

I have been thinking of talking about the modern and trendy furs of Gauja Furs from Lithuania for a long time. Actually, I am not a big fan of the showy (gaudy even!) fur style of Eastern European and Russian women, yet Gauja's designs are not short of the most avantgarde Italian fur styles at all! The jacket above for example, is both very trendy and very chic. In this post, I would like to present a number of examples from Gauja where fox and mink furs are mixed in innovative ways.

Fox is a longer hair fur and it's quite puffy, while mink is shorter hair. Still, in the example above, the mink section has been turned into something that is as soft and densely textured as velvet. Normally, mink fur has two types of hair or fur in it. There is the longer an coarser "guard fur", which, as its name implies, provides some protection, and then there is a shorter, denser "underfur". In the example above, the guard fur of the black mink was removed in what is called as "plucking" (literally plucking away the long guard fur!) and then the remainder is a fur that is very soft. A similar technique is called "shearing" and the resulting fur is called "sheared" (as in "sheared mink" or "sheared beaver"), which is similarly soft and dense.

In contrast with the uniform look of the plucked mink part, the shoulders are covered with dramatic contrasts of the silver fox. Furthermore, the monochrome palette of black mink draws all the attention to the stark contrasts of silver fox from white to steely gray and black.

Another fine fur taking great advantage of the contrast between the short haired mink and long haired fox. The red fox in the collar surely looks very fluffy and voluminous, but it is greatly aided in this endeavor by the fact that the mink fur making up the body of the coat has been plucked off its guard fur. In the meantime, the photograph is so sharply focused that the viewer is lost in the deep green of the model's eyes:)

Just like the previous two, this model consists of a body in sheared/plucked mink and polar fox as collar and hood trim. Polar fox is normally white but here the coat is uniformly dyed to the same color. The collar and the hood trim nicely frames the model's face, right!

If you are somewhat familiar with leather fashions with fur trim that primarily target the Russian audience, you must have seen lots of leather jackets and coats whose hems, cuffs and edges are trimmed in fur. The picture above has a tendency to slide in that direction, but this time the body of the coat is not leather but mink. This  mink is called blue iris and it blends perfectly with the silver fox trim of both the collar and cuffs. From the makeup of the model to her earrings and to the turtleneck sweater she is wearing, this is a fantastic combination and the resulting image is simply breathtaking.

The fur accessories of Gauja are great, too. Hopefully I will talk about them in another blog post soon.