Alongside Jole Veneziani and Maggy Rouff, a Balenciaga model in 1954 pictured a clean-cut, elegantly tailored woman in a broad-collared black fox.  At the same time, a young Valentino designed for “Desses” a slim ensemble with a leopard-skin belt and Stole.  There was great fascination by this time in the creations coming from the great Paris fashion-houses and the Sala Bianca of the Pitti Palace in Florence became the place where furs came to the runway.

By 1949, Ferdinando Schettini, the son of a Neapolitan wholesale furrier, who was already creating for Revillon, Freres, Moilyneux, Chanel and Shiaparelli in Paris, moved on to Milan to create furs for French and Italian society-women.  His extravagant evening wear became known for moveable shoulders that could be worn over a coat or a tailor-made jacket, along with fur gloves, hats and muffs.  Before fur breeding began to take hold of the industry, he is said to have gone to Turkey in search of perfect-matching chinchilla skins.

This was the time when furs were cleverly mounted on a tailor’s base of tulle, and when the importance was attached to luxurious linings bearing the client’s initials embroidered in gold thread.  

View White Stole’s entire collection for size color ranges of Stoles, Stole Wraps, Vintage Stoles, Stole Capes and Shawls for purchase, or rental, on our website.

“I was a madwoman who opened a workshop in Via Narone while the bombs were falling…I had inspiration, fancies, the will to do something.  Was I to put it all off until after? I am obstinate; I never wait until after!”  ~ Jole Veneziani.

While the bombs kept dropping during WWII, Jole Veneziani went on creating sumptuous, colorful and opulent designs that fulfilled her sense of verve, irony, and joy in treating furs as though they were materials.  It was Veneziani’s insistence that the color of her furs be in harmony with the color of the dress that compelled one of the best-known Italian fashion journalists, Maria Pezzi, to dub her the “Velvet Paw.”  Others called Veneziani “Venus in Furs” or the “Toulouse Lautrec of fashion.” 

In 1946, Jole produced a little jacket of moleskin dyed violet; the next year she overlaid a straight skirt with another skirt of rust-colored ermine, making the dress into a frock coat.  In 1950, she experimented with unusual mixtures marrying tulle with spotted fur, and by 1956 produced her famous pink, blue and ruby-red fox furs the exact shade of the dress, declaring “color is life, is youth.”  In 1957, she continued her chromatic color explorations with a cocoa-colored Persian lamb, ultimately ending the decade with collections including natural-colored furs side-by-side with lilac or melon-yellow mink.

Jole Veneziani was present in Florence when Italian fashion was born there in 1951.  Her concentration on bringing *"romantic clothes, full of poetry” to foreign markets cultivated 245 foreign customers for her creations, and led her to become a pioneer in reversing the trend of Haute Couture towards the ready-to-wear market…and ultimately to be considered the “Mother of the Italian Fur Business.”

*quote by the Swiss review Die Frau und ihre welt, 1961:  ‘In 1951 already, the American review Vogue stated that Europe had finally discovered that what America lacked was romantic clothes, full of poetry….since then, the Faustian double soul lives in Jole’s bosom:  the one that sketches furs and the other that designs clothes.”

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Fur that had been worn so becomingly at the turn-of-the century continued and proliferated after WWI and throughout the 50’s.  Fur hats endured an inconstant popularity, but made a strong return between 1957 and 1958 coming in all kinds of shapes:  berets, caps, turbans and cloches.  Fur trimmings, borders, and details became characteristic of the decade for outlining a hem or creating pockets, flowers or bows.  Nearly always fur was used for tailor-made collars or necklines of close-fitting evening dresses.

For the wedding of the Shah of Persia in 1951, Soroya wore a princess gown with marabou feathers while bridesmaids held the train of her ermine cloak.  At the marriage of Maria Pia of Savoy, the ex-queen wore a long, lace gown trimmed in mink.  Audrey Hepburn posed in the Piazza di Spagna in a long cloak edged in mink when filming Roman Holiday in 1953.  In the final scene of her 1954 movie A Star is Born, Judy Garland wore a Stole with sable cuffs.  Sophia Loren was seen in a Revillon Freres Stole that almost enveloped her with rows of fur in 1959.  By mid-century, the magazine Novita spoke of the growing vogue of fur trimmings of all kinds.

View White Stole’s entire collection for size color ranges of Stoles, Stole Wraps, Vintage Stoles, Stole Capes and Shawls for purchase, or rental, on our website.

The allure of the Fur Stole continued throughout the 50’s.  In 1951, Parisian fashion-house Revillon Freres followed the tradition of the Haute Couture tailors by creating modern, tailored fur-like fabrics - even surprising the couture world by using the Pekan fur rarely used in dressmaking. 

One of the most important pre-war furriers in Paris, Fourrures Max, presented black Persian lamb coats with collars and cuffs of wild mink.  Maggy Rouff preferred blue mink.  The Italian fashion-house, Rivella, produced the first black monkey-fur jacket with a neckline of white ermine - one of the most daring combinations seen up to this time.  The important point became bringing different materials together in one creation.

Fashion-houses quickly realized that the best results could only be gotten through expert translation of their designs by leading furriers.  Since the handling of these materials was so different, designers had to take-on specialized staff to learn the technique of fur garment production.
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Thus began the era in which great fortune was made in the fur industry.

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All-White or All-Black was the sign of splendor and luxury in the 50’s, but for Evening Wear, the color White had few rivals.  

Hollywood stars were rarely seen after dark without a bolero, shawl, boa collar or cape stole wrapping their shoulders 12 months of the year.

In the 50’s, “White” was seen as the perfect brightener to the night, while “White” became the favorite non-color for Queens, 

Princesses and Stars alike showed us that a White Stole went perfectly with everything from a long-waisted to a long-clinging gown. 

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Starting as early as the 30’s, as well as during and after WWII, Hollywood Stars assumed, involuntarily, the task of promoting fashion’s fur trade despite the poor quality of materials available at the time. 

​During the 40’s, accessories trended toward inexpensive fur “pieces,” which began as a sort of down-payment on the entire garment, or an exclamation mark that pointed to a famous fashion-house. Along with huge or small muffs and high collars, countless hems, fur or feather boas, fur was applied to voluminous coat-tails or gown skirt borders.

Though impossible to reach in the hearts of the average 50’s woman, visions of Marlene Dietrich dressed in long, flowing gowns with a fox around the bodice, Rita Hayworth reclining on mounds of fur of every kind with a mink stole draped over one shoulder, Betty Hutton wearing only a white fox, Mae West in white mink - or Ava Garner in nothing but fur - spoke to the luxury, opulence, seduction and femininity so many women longed-for.

View White Stole’s entire collection for size color ranges of Stoles, Stole Wraps, Vintage Stoles, Stole Capes and Shawls for purchase, or rental, on our website.

Mary Quant’s opening of her first London boutique in 1955 signaled the beginning of the silent pre-revolution.
Simultaneously, the Pitti Palace in Florence, which had held the most important Italian fashion shows since 1952, brought furs into their own in a show entitled “Fur Promotion.”  Although furs remained only a dream for women as compared to owning gas-cookers or pastel-colored refrigerators after the war, nonetheless women dreamed.  Their secret desire was fueled by the film “Miracolo a Milano” in which the dream of a poor woman was a fur coat – the height of everything they would never possess.

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Under the influence of the New Look, followed by the “H,” the “A” and the “Y” lines suggestive of balloons, trapezoids and sheaths, the 50’s were the glory years for Haute Couture as well as the rapid growth of Italian and French fashion. This new decade ushered in victory with women wearing nylon, imitating Debbie Reynolds wearing red lipstick and eyeliner, the arrival of feminine curves in fashion with the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the season of full-busted "poor but beautiful" women on both sides of the Atlantic. 

View White Stole’s entire collection for size color ranges of Stoles, Stole Wraps, Vintage Stoles, Stole Capes and Shawls for purchase, or rental, on our website.