Fur Coat

Four auctions over the next five days will offer bidders a chance to nourish their interests in everything from haute couture to horticulture, with a little real estate and a lot of furniture thrown in. The haute couture is at the Fine Arts Co. of Philadelphia, 2317 Chestnut St., where almost 300 lots of designer and vintage apparel will be auctioned starting at 10 a.m. today. Much of the clothing comes from the estate of Catharine Wharton, who lived at the Barclay Hotel and who, to judge from the labels on the items, did much of her shopping at Nan Duskin nearby.

The crowd smelled blood, so to speak, and it put people in the proper mood for a strange fashion show. About 200 of them, mostly young, female and white, already had marched around town carrying strongly worded placards past department stores and fur shops: "Fur coats are worn by beautiful animals and ugly people . . . Fur free Philly," "Ban Fur. Fur is Blood" and "Stop Animal Torture. Don't buy fur. " They gathered outside City Hall in the clammy cold yesterday and hooted gleefully while an animal-rights activist listed a series of businesses around the nation that had gone under or stopped selling fur coats.

Five Philadelphia men have been charged with smashing the front window of Renaissance Resale and Consignment in Bryn Mawr Saturday morning and stealing about $5,000 worth of women's fur coats and leather jackets. Lower Merion police arrested the five after a car chase and took them to Montgomery County Prison. Lt. George Clement said three of the men were transvestites. Police discovered this, he said, when the men changed into prison uniforms and three of them were wearing women's underwear.

A 17-year-old youth was arrested yesterday and charged with eight armed robberies on the city's streets over a three-week period, including three in which the victims were shot and wounded, police said. The suspect, Jermaine Ford, pulled a handgun when two detectives with a warrant for his arrest confronted him outside his home in the 2500 block of North Spangler Street in the city's Strawberry Mansion section about 2 p.m., police said. Detectives Michael McGinley and Joseph Henkel disarmed Ford and took him into custody.

A Delaware County woman was changed with insurance fraud after she allegedly claimed Neiman Marcus lost her fur coat, the Attorney General's Office announced Thursday. Samiha Guirguis, 59, of Havertown, was also charged with theft by deception and forgery. According to court documents, in 2005 Guirguis put her $1,000 mink coat in storage at the store's King of Prussia location. When she went to retrieve the fur in 2009, Guirguis said the coat was not hers, the documents say. She presented an altered receipt showing the coat was worth $10,000 and then attempted to claim the loss on her homeowners insurance policy, the documents say. Guirguis was arrested Tuesday and released after posting $5,000 unsecured bail, authorities said.

A homeless New Jersey man was charged yesterday with murder in the hammer- slaying of a transsexual in a Morrisville apartment in June, Bucks County authorities said yesterday. Johnny Fitzpatrick 3d came to the attention of police in the killing of his friend, Lawrence Ransom, 37, also known as Sherrie Ransom, after he was arrested in New Jersey last week as a suspect in two killings in that state, District Attorney Alan M. Rubenstein said at a news conference. Fitzpatrick, 30, of the Asbury Park area, confessed to Ransom's slaying under questioning by police in New Jersey, according to a probable cause affidavit filed by Bucks County authorities yesterday.

Tis the season to be jolly. Maybe. But, for sure, 'tis the season to feel the cold. And when I was young, this was always the season when I dreamed of owning a fur. That was in the late '50s. But today, the wearing of fur is no longer simply the fulfillment of a dream; it's become a matter of ethics. This year, when the weather first turned cold, I got to wondering how young women really feel about wearing fur. So I asked a few students in my college classes this question: "If a wealthy relative were to offer you a fur coat, would you accept it?"

Martinez Jackson, 71, the father of professional baseball star Reggie Jackson, was robbed at knifepoint yesterday inside his Olney fur store, police said. Police said two thieves made off with a waist-length raccoon coat and a watch commemorating the day Jackson's son hit his 400th major league home run. Jackson, in an interview, placed the value of the coat at $1,000 and the watch, a Cartier, at about $1,700. Jackson said he was alone in the store at about 1 p.m. when two men in their twenties, who had been in twice before yesterday, entered a third time.

Doris Dalton-Martineaux of Northampton Township, a chiropractor, won the title Mrs. Pennsylvania last month based on beauty, intelligence, speech, poise and interviews with a five-judge panel. "It's an experience you're never going to have again," she said. "When that music started and I got on stage, I felt like Elvis Presley: My legs were twitching and my lips were quivering. " Fifty-four women competed in the annual competition near Pittsburgh, which included a swimsuit and evening gown competition.

Children's fiction abounds with ogres, lowlifes and cackling villains, but has there ever been anything as bizarrely fearsome for the tots as Gerard Depardieu's entrance in 102 Dalmatians? As the French couturier Jean-Pierre Le Pelt, Depardieu sashays down the runway of his own fashion show festooned in furs, suggesting a designer caveman. His haircut looks like the work of a sadist armed with a lawn mower. The ubiquitous French star, who evidently has an anxiety attack if a film is shot anywhere in the world without him, clearly aims to out-camp Glenn Close, who returns as Cruella De Vil. But with her costumes and that skunk-on-shock-therapy hairstyle, it's no contest.

LONDON - When Ray Harryhausen was 13, he was so overwhelmed by "King Kong" that he vowed he would create otherworldly creatures on film. He fulfilled his desire as an adult, thrilling audiences with skeletons in a sword fight, a gigantic octopus destroying the Golden Gate Bridge and a six-armed dancing goddess. On Tuesday, Harryhausen, 92, died at London's Hammersmith Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for about a week. Though little known by the general public, Harryhausen made 17 movies that are cherished by devotees of film fantasy.

I THINK IT WAS the homeless woman wearing a tattered floor-length mink that convinced me that Philly is a big fur town. I see them everywhere. Flared sables with shawl collars walking down Market. Fox cuffs and trim waiting for the train. Fitted Texas raccoons headed to lunch and dinner. Jersey black muskrats off to the theater. Both men and women. Don't get nervous. I'm not going to go all PETA on you - in fact, the opposite: fur put food on my table, clothes on my back. It helped pay for college.

A Delaware County woman was changed with insurance fraud after she allegedly claimed Neiman Marcus lost her fur coat, the Attorney General's Office announced Thursday. Samiha Guirguis, 59, of Havertown, was also charged with theft by deception and forgery. According to court documents, in 2005 Guirguis put her $1,000 mink coat in storage at the store's King of Prussia location. When she went to retrieve the fur in 2009, Guirguis said the coat was not hers, the documents say. She presented an altered receipt showing the coat was worth $10,000 and then attempted to claim the loss on her homeowners insurance policy, the documents say. Guirguis was arrested Tuesday and released after posting $5,000 unsecured bail, authorities said.

Robert M. Kelley is an Inquirer editor The photo really took me back - to being chased by a coach, to a tale of a fur coat and jail, and a runner on strike. The man in the upper left of the photo was known to me only as "Mr. Walker," and my only direct interaction with him was being chased by him. He always seemed to have an air of self-importance, and now I know why: About 10 years before I knew him, he had been the coach of the high school basketball team in the photo.

PARIS HILTON is in coast-to-coast trouble. As NBC-10 reported, Paris could face an FCC fine for using the F-word on an Atlantic City fire-dispatch radio during taping last Friday of "The Simple Life. " Meanwhile, according to the New York Daily News' Rush & Molloy, the Beverly Hills D.A. is deciding whether to press charges against the airhead heiress for vandalism and petty theft. Seems Paris was in Swing News newsstand on Sunset Boulevard last month when she noticed the store selling her boring, glassy-eyed, poorly lit sex tape, "One Night in Paris.

Finery and fragiles will be featured at three sales between this weekend and the next. The finery will be offered by two auctioneers, one in town, the other in Bucks County. At 10 a.m. tomorrow in Port Richmond, Barry Slosberg will feature several thousand articles of apparel as part of his regular Sunday sale that otherwise includes furniture, glassware and box lots. The clothing comes from a New Jersey second-hand store that went bankrupt a year and a half ago. Along with dresses in a variety of sizes and styles, the inventory includes fur coats, shoes, hats, and costume jewelry.

Fila brasileiros always look sad. But this particular purebred had his reasons: Ribs showing, freezing cold, he weighed in at 91 pounds - about a quarter less than normal - when the animal warden picked him up last Sunday. "In his condition, he would not have made it," said Joe Pulcinella, manager of the Delaware County SPCA, where workers are helping the dog gain weight for an eventual adoption. He has plenty of company. Shelters say rescue calls are at up to twice the number of last year's consistently mild January, and tipsters are often calling for the right reasons.

Children's fiction abounds with ogres, lowlifes and cackling villains, but has there ever been anything as bizarrely fearsome for the tots as Gerard Depardieu's entrance in 102 Dalmatians? As the French couturier Jean-Pierre Le Pelt, Depardieu sashays down the runway of his own fashion show festooned in furs, suggesting a designer caveman. His haircut looks like the work of a sadist armed with a lawn mower. The ubiquitous French star, who evidently has an anxiety attack if a film is shot anywhere in the world without him, clearly aims to out-camp Glenn Close, who returns as Cruella De Vil. But with her costumes and that skunk-on-shock-therapy hairstyle, it's no contest.

Would you arrive at a radio station naked under a fur coat to have lunch with your favorite performer? Nineteen-year-old Nijla Diggs did. Diggs dared to flash several Power 99 employees (mainly men) just to meet R&B singing star Maxwell. Ten other lucky women also had the opportunity to meet Maxwell, but they did not have to strip. They were winners of a contest that selected the "hardest worker of the day. " Maxwell arrived in a classy black stretch limo and cruised the radio station wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses, a faded head wrap and loose-fitting black pants.

Bingo chips, fishing hooks, a pool cue, a shillelagh, maybe a few bocce balls. Not exactly what you might consider buried treasure, right? Wrong. They're just a few of the sentimental treasures that have accompanied Philadelphia folks on their journey to the hereafter. Some even took money for "the toll. " Burying loved ones with a cherished possession or favorite item - a custom that goes back hundreds of years - gives comfort, solace and consolation to those left behind, local funeral directors say. But there's one difference.