Warm top, cold legs
Triple P was at Waterloo Station the other evening when he saw a young woman (mid twenties, we would guess) in a mink jacket. We can't remember the last time we saw a woman in London wearing real fur. Then, three days later, we saw another one, this time in Cobham.
The only place we used to see lots of women wearing fur coats (other than Canada) was Rome and Milan in the eighties when, whatever the weather, they would appear in the evening given the flimsiest of social excuses.
In Britain it hasn't been socially acceptable to wear a real fur for many years. When we were at Oxford we had a girlfriend who had a real fur coat and used to squirm about on it artistically but even in 1980 it was becoming unusual.
The fashion industry largely rejected fur until they realised that there was a whole new market of wealthy buyers who didn't care about the ethics of fur so they started to reintroduce it into their ranges again. Frankly, if they thought that rich people would buy clothes made from live anti-personnel mines the fashion industry would sell them. Triple P remembers reading the Jerry Cornelius novels of Michael Moorcock in the late seventies (one of which The Final Programme (1973) was made into one of Triple P's favourite films). In the novels Cornelius sported a Panda skin coat which would no doubt be the ultimate for those with more money than taste.
The only thing we can attribute these sudden sightings of fur to is the number of Russians living in the area. In the days of the Soviet Union Russian citizens were not allowed to live more than a certain distance from central London but now, of course, they can live anywhere; although most seem to choose to live around here. People from really cold countries do not seem to worry about wearing fur, naturally.
Not long ago a large house called Pinewood went up for sale here, which is situated about half a mile away, between Triple P's house and the station. It seems to have sold, despite an asking price of £22million, so maybe that has been bought by Russians as well. Can we expect to see more girls in fur jackets on the station if this is so? Probably not, as anyone who can afford to buy Pinewood would travel by car (it has parking for twenty cars) or helicopter (it has its own helicopter pad).
