Wrapping Up -- Downtown Seattle Fur-Salon Owner To Close His Doors After 65 Years Of Business

When Salvator P. Trippy opened his downtown Seattle fur salon on June 5, 1929, he was two weeks shy of his wedding day and the Great Depression was looming 4 1/2 months in the future.

Trippy, then 20, was eager to make a name for himself in the fur business. Despite the Depression, he expanded his shop to three rooms the first year. Times were hard, but when his wife's parents offered to help him financially, he said no: "I married your daughter, I'll take care of her."

His word was as good as his business. His fur salon, Salvator P. Trippy Inc., spanned 65 years, outlasting a dozen downtown competitors. When Trippy Inc. closes its doors Nov. 15, it will be as the oldest fur salon, and one of two remaining downtown.

Trippy, now 85, makes it look like an age worth reaching. His fingers are skilled and nimble, his wit charming and sharp.

One day last week, he sat on a stool in the back of his shop, slicing and stitching dolman sleeves onto a customer's 10-year-old fur. He was altering the coat to fit over suits and sweaters, using skills he learned as an after-school apprentice in 1926 at the former Hudson Bay Fur Co., located at First Avenue and Marion Street.

Trippy says changing economics, a trend toward more casual attire and anti-fur activism closed most of his competitors. But as Trippy reminisced about his career, he expressed no regrets. The fur business, he says, has been good to him.

"It isn't that I don't want to continue working. I do," Trippy says, holding a slice of pelt in his hand. "I just think it's about time that I quit."

In 1935, when the salon moved to a storefront at 1406 Fifth Ave., a fur coat could be had for as little as $50. Oriental mink and ermine, the most popular furs, started at $250 (nearly half the $482 average annual salary in Washington State).

In that bygone era, fur was a fashion and class - not a political - statement. Few people thought about the animals. At one time there were nearly a dozen downtown fur shops, including salons in each major department store.

"How much is that coyote in the window?" Trippy asks his daughter, Marguerite Capps, pointing to the suite showroom window. It's $2,495 full price (all the coats are on sale). Today, a full-length mink, still the most popular, starts at $2,000 (nearly 10 percent of the $21,773 average annual salary in Washington State last year). Today, $200 will buy a sheared rabbit jacket.

In his ninth-floor Tower Building showroom, Trippy's rolling out his last racks of full-length mink coats, raccoon jackets, three-quarter-length lynx strollers. Lynx pelts are pricey, and popular with the jet-set Hollywood crowd, Trippy says. A three-quarter-length lynx stroller costs $8,000.

Changing times

Slip into a mink and it feels like a bearhug without the heartbeat. These coats once dripped sheer luxury. Animal-rights activists say they also drip the blood of animals trapped, slaughtered and skinned for their fur.

Times have changed. Celebrities like Brigitte Bardot, Christie Brinkley and Steve Martin sign statements decrying the suffering of animals killed for their pelts and vow not to wear fur. Twenty or so apparel designers no longer use fur, including Giorgio Armani, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Anne Klein.

Trippy doesn't understand why animal-rights groups singled out the fur business. He wonders how wearing fur coats is any different than eating beef or chicken or wearing leather shoes.

Mitchell Fox of the Progressive Animal Welfare Society agrees with Trippy -on that point. There is no difference. PAWS counts all these actions as cruelty against animals and opposes them all. Fox says the anti-fur crusade just caught more attention than the farm-factory protests.

"All we have to do is show animals being trapped or inhumanely confined and people feel empathy for them," Fox says. "I think we've done our job in convincing the public that it's needlessly cruel and selfish. The fabric of society changed - no pun intended - not to include fur."

It was about 10 years ago that Trippy began to notice anti-fur protests were dragging down sales. He came to work one day and his locks were plugged. He moved out of his street-front store and into an office suite to avoid the commotion. A few other furriers fled to the suburbs.

Trippy also listened to the protesters. All the pelts he sells are ranch-raised, except for the Canadian lynx.

"They wrote notes and things and made us feel like we are killing animals and that we just aren't right," Trippy says. "We try to be right."

Now, after several years of declining sales, the fur business seems to be on the upswing again. National fur sales bottomed at $1 billion in 1991, then gained $100 million a year the following two years. Sales were up to $1.2 billion in 1993, matching 1990 sales, says Sandy Blye, fashion promotion director for the Fur Information Council of America in New York.

Blye credits an improved economy and the past two bitter-cold East Coast winters. She calls anti-fur activists a "vocal minority."

Trippy says his business felt the shift upward this past year. But it's nothing like the 1940s, which Trippy fondly dubs his heyday. Rosie the Riveter jump-started the fur business on the heels of the Depression.

When men left for World War II, women left to work at Boeing. Women did without nylon stockings for the war effort. But many had their own money for the first time. And many bought their own fur coat.

"In the early '40s, when women started working for Boeing, the first thing they wanted to buy was a fur coat," Trippy says. "It was their heart's desire. And that's a fact."

It was a time when movie stars like Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich draped furs and gestured with cigarette holders to dramatize glamour. Fur coats just flew out the door.

Trippy hired a sales assistant in 1946, Gerda Jewell. She's stayed for 48 years, selling and occasionally modeling furs.

Innocent times

They were more innocent days 50 years ago. Trippy would ship several fur coats, each worth the price of a new car, to a customer's home; the customer would select one and ship back the rest. He remembers one instance when he shipped three fur coats to a customer in Alaska. None of them were returned. The customer invited a couple of friends over to try them on and they bought all three.

During the past 65 years, Trippy and his wife, the former Mary Costa, raised two children. Mary died 10 years ago. Their son and daughter joined him in the shop.

Stephen Trippy was in the priesthood for 21 years. He left five years ago, and joined his father in the shop last year. Marguerite Capps started working in the shop out of high school, married and left in 1962 to travel with her husband, Wally, who was in the Coast Guard. She returned to the salon in 1977.

Stephen stood in the doorway of his father's alterations room last week, watching him alter a customer's coat. "It's really the end of an era," he said, his gaze lingering on his father's hands.