Sleek Heat

OUR WINTERS may be mild, but there will be times-elegant evenings at the symphony, $l,000-a-plate Republican fund-raisers, debutante balls and extravagant dinners at Jean Claude-when nothing but a fur will do. Deliciously impractical, completely unessential.

A VOLUMINOUS FUR has an attitude nothing else-neither jewels nor Cadillacs-can render. The young girl who stands, her breath gently fogging the window, watching ladies of fashion come and go from a brightly lighted house across the way, can easily fantasize about the life of a woman in fur: She is not given to long, dreary auxiliary luncheons of Cornish hen or cordon bleu, but to long walks with her two tall, willowy Afghan hounds through a blustery, frosty Dallas park. The glamorous woman, clutching a dark sable collar to her slender throat, has a bittersweet past, a European lover and elegantly piled, coiffured hair. Her nails do not chip; her toilet does not run. She smiles.

THESE ARE the furs we happened upon this season, the furs our models neglected other appointments for to stay and model longer (“I can wear an $18 blouse anytime.”). These minks, and sables and skins of squirrel look elegantly appropriate in and atop downtown Dallas’ Adolphus Hotel. But perhaps they would grace any pleasant place. Furs are not meant for the raw, sleeting nights. Those nights are better-suited to thick, plush robes and slippers and warm snifters of cognac. Furs are for the cold, crisp, beautiful times. Most often they need no explanation.