I used to buy my fur at Bergdorf's, which I'm pretty sure is where my grandfather bought my grandmother her furs in the 40s, but in these tough economic times I was looking for designer furs at wholesale pricing when a friend told me about Marc Kaufman. On my first visit to his showroom in Fall 2010, I bought a gorgeous sheared mink jacket with fox trim for only $1195! I have received so many compliments on the piece, which would cost at least 2 or 3 times the price anywhere else.
Last summer I brought all my furs in for cold storage with Marc Kaufman, and again, the price was right: just $25 per item! After having everything cleaned, at Jody's suggestion, I had a couple of my favorite pieces glazed to restore their luster for the season. When I picked up my collection I couldn't have been more pleased; my coats & accessories looked brand new again!
My grandmother passed away this Spring and left me her old fur coats, most notably 3 full-length long-haired mink coats. I was devastated to find that not only did all of the coats need a good cleaning, several pieces were ripped or otherwise damaged, some of the leather was in really bad shape, so dried out it looked like it would crumble apart if I tried to do anything with it, but all of the pieces were hopelessly outdated and the wrong size! I cabbed it down 7th avenue with a huge garbage bag of damaged furs, which I then unceremoniously dumped on Marc's counter.
The whole pile was cleaned ($45/per piece), all those rips and tears required them to open the lining of the garments to reinforce the torn area and sew it back up again (the fur repairs are not be visible from outside the garments), but the coolest thing was the remodeling. Of course, I knew fur could be altered, but I had no idea that there were so many options!
As well as restoring one of the long mink coats to it's original 1940s glamor and resizing it to fit me, through the fur remodeling program at Kaufman Furs, I wound up with a sheared 3/4 coat, an exquisite mink neck muff, a pair of detachable mink cuffs for my wool coat, a mink pocketbook, mink earmuffs, and Marc even had a fur teddy bear made from leftover mink! (This service is usually $100). I gave it to my niece for Christmas as her first introduction to fur and vowed to sit down after the New Year and write my very first review.
A good furrier's services are always expensive, but I found the quality of service to be outstanding and well worth the prices, which are extremely reasonable for these types of services. I will be shopping for fur, and having my precious pelts cleaned, altered, glazed, and stored at Kaufman Furs for many years to come.
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