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At The Rainbow Fleet, vintage coats get a new life.
The Rainbow Fleet, along with several other vintage or high-end thrift stores on the island, stocks secondhand furs. Though their furs are available year-round (July and August are their busiest fur-selling months), once the fall season rolls around, I go straight to The Rainbow Fleet's fur rack. On it swing about a dozen stunning pieces, from a mulled purple rabbit-fur jacket to floor-length mink coats in shiny black.
Of course, all the furs they sell are secondhand sourced, and sold with hope of giving the pieces a new life in another home. The Rainbow Fleet staff and artisan, Casey Boukus, said that fur is always … complicated.
“Fur is, well, a sticky subject. I have sort of a weird paradoxical relationship with it, because on the one hand, I’d rather have natural materials; I’d prefer real fur over faux fur, when you think of the process to make [faux fur]. It’s all still something coming from the Earth, whether it starts as an animal or petroleum. But, the fur industry, for a really long time, was a really unfortunate and miserable existence for a lot of creatures,” Casey explained, leaning over the checkout counter, as I sifted through the rack to find a piece I wanted to pose with.
My best friend Marley picked a full-length mink to take pictures with, while I found one that stopped at my waist. Standing outside in the parking lot of the thrift store, wrapped in our fur coats, we realized for the first time just how warm they really are. In the early January chill, our breath blew milky white clouds out in front of us. I was in a short dress and nylon tights, yet we weren’t cold. I was so warm and comfortable in the jacket I picked out that I would have bought it, if only the sleeves had been a little longer.
“I think that secondhand real furs are the most ethical way that you can wear furs,” Marley said as we discussed the furs discourse. “Fake fur is just made of plastic, which is still bad in a different way. So, I wouldn’t buy real fur firsthand, but I think secondhand, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
When we changed out of our jackets at the end of the shoot, I didn’t want to take off the one I’d picked out.
“We have some people that come in and they have the coat that they love, and they come in and try it on a bunch of times, and sometimes they never come back, and sometimes they come get it,” Casey told me. “I think it’s nice that they get a second life.”
Next, read Thrifting on Nantucket: ‘Like a Treasure Hunt’.
