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A small showroom sits just down the hall and to the right at Charles Furriers in Wormleysburg. The carpet is blue, and the walls are white. There is no glitz, no glam. Just chrome racks of fur coats and hats and small aisles with just enough room for a shopper to twirl in front of a mirror.
The proprietor sits behind the counter in what looks like a white doctor's coat. Charles Simpson Sr., 86, took over the business in the late 1940s, fresh from a stint in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. The man who sported a crew cut in his youth now uses bobby pins to keep his blonde-and-gray comb-over in place, just above his forehead.
The pungent scent of mothball fumes makes the store feel more like a grandma's attic than a couture boutique. But the retail niche that has withstood the high-profile, animal-rights protests of the 1980s and 1990s has come out of the closet. Fur fashion never completely disappeared, but in the past two years, fur has crept quietly back into the limelight. During the spring fashion shows, fur appeared in most of the fall and winter designer lines.
Charles Furriers is one of 100 fur manufacturers in the U.S., according to the Fur Information Council of America. The majority of them are small, family-run businesses.
Muscalus Furs in a suburb of Harrisburg is the only other known furrier in Central Pennsylvania, although there is a furstorage business in New Freedom and a fur retailer in Hanover, York County.
Charles Sr. doesn't want to retire, although his children have asked him to consider it. His 60-year-old son, Charles Simpson Jr., helps clean and repair customers' coats. Charles Sr.'s daughter, Pamela Simpson, relocated from California in November to help her dad with marketing and finishing. The three of them live above the shop with their mother, Edissa, who is 83 and suffering from cancer. The store has six other employees.
Charles Sr. still takes custom orders and designs his own pieces a dying art in the U.S., according to those in the industry.
"He goes seven days a week," Pamela said. "He can do anything when it comes to skins."
Fur coats retail for tens of thousands...