Michael Kutza was in L.A. getting ready for the Chicago International Film Festival when our question caught him off guard. Do you own a muskrat coat? Giggling, the festival’s founding father admitted he indeed bought such a coat 12 years ago when people did “frivolous things” like own fur. “Why do you ask?” he said. This is what makes the job hard. It was our sad duty to inform Kutza of his coat’s impending sale. “What? That can’t be. My coat’s been in storage for 100 years,” protested Kutza.
Well, Mike, here’s the scoop. First you “put on a little weight,” as you say; then you decided “it isn’t real smart to wear fur coats these days.” So you took the coat to Carol Furs, of North Michigan Avenue, for cleaning and indefinite storage. End of story. Or so you thought. Ware was since acquired by Himmel Furs, which decided this summer to sell items it says haven’t been claimed in a long while.
Which is how you got on a list of people whose furs were to be sold this month unless redeemed. The list, published in a local paper as required by law, included a number of prominent Chicagoans, so don’t feel lonely. There was a futures executive at the Merc, a partner in an executive search firm, the former fashion editor of another Chicago newspaper and a gay-rights activist.
“It’s stuff people never came back for,” explains store manager LaNell Cimo. “We tried to contact them, but we can’t find them. Maybe they moved, or maybe they got tired of the garment and didn’t want to pay the money.”
All Himmel wants out of it is its costs, so among other bargains is a raccoon coat for $100, a ranch mink at $250 and a beaver at $295. And Mike Kutza’s muskrat coat at $250.
“Shouldn’t they tell me they’re doing this?” Kutza sputtered through the phone cable. “I think I just paid the storage bill.” Kutza was going to clear up the misunderstanding.
