Chris Anthopoulos buzzes guests in from the lobby of Yukon Fur Co. Ltd. on Spadina Avenue, but only after asking for their names.
Given the furrier's controversial industry, the measure makes sense, but when the burly 66-year-old emerges from the back room wearing a lab coat - the uniform of his trade - it feels more like an old-fashioned courtesy.
The gesture is just one part security; the other is frugality. With the exception of the occasional walk-in, Yukon Fur now mostly does only wholesale business, and Mr. Anthopoulos can't afford floor staff. It's a far cry from the days when throngs of Torontonians lined up to cloak themselves in his opulent mink and sable.
"From the late seventies to the late eighties was the golden era," says Mr. Anthopoulos, whose business is down by 40 per cent this year.
Perched along Spadina and the streets of the city's former fashion district - now the Entertainment District - the last of Toronto's furriers are bracing for another hit with the downturn.
But having weathered at least one recession, fashion houses that moved their production to China and Mexico, as well as animal-rights activists who terrorized the well-groomed ladies of Holt Renfrew and the Hummingbird Centre throughout the nineties, many in the downtrodden industry are optimistic they will survive.
Adding to their anticipation is the renewed popularity of vintage furs, as well as the "Fur Is Green" campaign launched this past fall by the Fur Council of Canada, a non-profit that represents 70,000 farmers, trappers, auction houses, retail furriers and others. Alan Herscovici, the executive vice-president, says the times are right to promote fur as a sustainable resource, though he admits the downturn will be brutal for furriers.
"They should have been doing this quite a long time ago, on a bigger scale," says Paul Magder, who runs Magder Furs on Spadina with his father Paul and brother Glen. "They were concentrating on emerging markets like China and Russia and promoting Canadian furs and skins over there."
Ninety-year-old Norman Rogul is the oldest in Toronto's fur business, with 56 years under his belt. He owned Norman Furs at Adelaide Street West and tiny Maud Street. The shop closed six years ago.
Mr. Rogul, who has made furs for the Queen of England, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and Joan Collins, said activists and the 1989 recession dealt blows to the industry, "but the fur business survived and we did business. But today, it's in few hands."
According to Industry Canada, fur exports were down from $450-million in 2006 to $381-million in 2007.
Last week, a gaudy lilac mink jacket (price tag: $3,000) hung in the window of the Magders' distinctive three-storey house, one of the last on this stretch.
The Magders still sell new and vintage coats, remodel and refit old pieces, offer cold storage and trade-ins if it proves too expensive to restyle a coat. "The plus side is that more people are interested in the used furs, which we're very big at. We're hurting on the high end, but we're picking up a lot on the good used coats," the senior Magder says.
As with other Januarys, this one is slow, "because the bills have come in," his son says. But December, 2008, was actually better than December, 2007. The Magders guess that the bitter winter is driving some to fur. They are also seeing more clients from emerging markets such as China, Russia and the Middle East.
Mr. Anthopoulos sells mostly wholesale to American buyers, and comes in before 6 a.m. to field European orders.
"Fur-industry people work very hard. Long hours," says Mr. Anthopoulos, who typically pulls a 12-hour shift.
In the back room, rows of tiny ancient sewing machines sit on tables that are strewn with skins, some of which have been stapled down so they can stretch. Mr. Anthopoulos buys skins at a fur-harvesters' auction, cuts and flattens them in his production room, tabulates how many skins are needed for a coat, and then sends them to local seamstresses, most of them Greek women.
Of the little that is selling, mink, beaver and Persian lamb are popular; Mr. Anthopoulos also carries chinchilla and otter. But he laments, "Lifestyles have changed. The women who wore fur coats now spend winter in Florida."
He says that, occasionally, Yukon gets young ladies who are "updating their grandma's coat or their mother's coat to make it more modern."
The Magders have also seen a slight upswing in university-aged women looking for fitted vintage mink and muskrat evening jackets, priced at $100 to $1,500, depending on their condition.
Another unlikely lifeline for the industry has been hip hop.
"Hip hop always does a lot to promote luxury," says Toronto-based stylist Sarah Jay. "And nothing says diva like fur." She points to Beyoncé famously jiggling her fur coat before hubby Jay-Z in 2003's Crazy in Love and Lil' Kim cooing, "It's the furs, the minks, the jewels, the minks," in Get Naked.
The junior Magder notes that sales jumped every time Samantha Jones wore fur on an episode of Sex and the City.
But, Ms. Jones aside, this is a sunset industry. "We've always been conservative in the sense of how we do business," Mr. Anthopoulos says. "We're going to have to work very hard and make the right moves."
