Then & now: Below the pelt

Autumn in Hong Kong - even if the weather remains relatively warm - brings forth a widespread desire for winter garment display. Padded alpine jackets and fleece-lined coats (many of which would be better suited to a wet, windy day in the Himalayas than to an afternoon's mall-crawling in Mong Kok) make their first appearances and are paraded and enjoyed for the next few months.

Further up the price scale, woollen knits and slinky cashmere jumpers also appear. But at the top of the range - as ever - genuine fur takes the prize. Despite the fact that Hong Kong is hot and sweaty (more or less) for nine months of the year, the city has always consumed a vast number of animal skins and pelts.

In former times, fur coats on one's wife, concubines or mistresses connoted wealth and power for affluent men across the racial spectrum, and women from that social category openly vied with each other in vulgar outward displays. The styles varied with the season, adding to a sense of extravagant one-upmanship; but mink, silver fox and sable coats tended to be lifetime purchases and, depending on how much wear an item got, it might become a valued heirloom.

Like watches and jewellery, fur coats generally stayed with the mistress as part of her "settlement" when an affair ended. And depending on the need to keep her quiet - or provide for any unanticipated offspring - a flat or two might be thrown in as part of the arrangement as well.

North China has long, bitterly cold winters and, as a result, fur coats have a long history in that part of the country. Manchuria has historically produced large quantities of farmed fur - mostly rabbit, as the meat is edible - and mainland demand remains high.

Hong Kong's fur consumption rapidly accelerated in the late 1940s with the near wholesale removal of wealthy families from China's northern cities. In particular, the renowned Shanghainese penchant for vulgar ostentation came brashly to the fore. Former residents of cold northern cities, where a warm coat was a genuine seasonal need, brought these garments down to Hong Kong with them when they decamped - fur coats, along with expensive jewellery and watches, were readily portable, retained their value and could be redeemed for cash if personal circumstances dictated.

But what became of these coats in Hong Kong's summer months? Drying cupboards and wardrobes fitted with a low-voltage electric bulb inside, to reduce humidity, along with other home-storage solutions such as camphor chests helped prevent winter clothes from growing moss and suede shoes from sprouting whiskers, but they were simply not powerful enough to preserve fur coats from permanent damage from dampness.

In the entrepreneurial Hong Kong way, companies with refrigeration facilities, such as Dairy Farm, accepted fur coats for cold storage during the summer months. Thoroughly cleaned first to eliminate any vermin, fur coats were hung in bags in the cold-room, where they remained in the garment equivalent of suspended animation from about May until October.

In the days before widespread domestic air-conditioning and dehumidification (even for the wealthy), this was the only way to prevent such an expensive purchase from looking and smelling like what it essentially was - a gradually decaying skin stripped from a dead animal.