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Fur coats for frigid days in Green Bay

Everyone laughed when Joe Namath modeled a $5,000 mink coat in Shea Stadium last August, but take a look at this gang in little old Green Bay, home of the coldest established permanent floating football game in the world. Everyone from the mayor to the president of the Packers is wrapped in fur—and not just football's traditional raccoon. Russian marmot, Chinese jackal, Norwegian hair seal and other exotica are selling like turtlenecks and the men's fur-coat business has doubled in a year. Sheryll-Allen, designers of furs exclusively for men, sold its entire year's projected production of coats in six months. And while Namath's mink and such rarities as Coopchik-Forrest's one-of-a-kind $15,000 sea otter are for out-and-out hedonists, there are many furs—such as rabbit, marmot and guanaco—that cost no more than half a dozen season tickets to Packer home games. One of the big innovations in men's furs is stenciling, which gives comparatively inexpensive skins more zip. "Fur for men is not really new," says Furrier Kenneth Wagner. "It's only within the past 100 years that women have taken the fur coat away from men. This year men are taking it back on their own terms—handsome, rugged and masculine." Once, every change in men's fashion was greeted with a groan by the victims. Now, anything goes.

MAYOR
Don Tilleman is well prepared to greet football fans at the Green Bay railroad station. His double-breasted coat by Arthur Phaff ($550) is Russian marmot, stenciled in a herringbone pattern.

DEFENSIVE BACK
Doug Hart feeds his wife Marilyn at a tail-gate picnic, wearing a jackal coat by Georges Kaplan ($595) and a raccoon hat from Hat Corp. Marilyn's raccoon coat ($410) is by Mallory.

PACKER PRESIDENT
Dominic Olejniczak (right) wears a natural sheared sea otter ($3,750), and Jerry Atkinson, on the Packers' board of directors, a South West African fur seal ($1,250) by Ben Kahn.

OFFENSIVE: GUARD
Jerry Kramer, in a short double-breasted stadium coat of Norwegian hair seal with a big shawl collar by Allen Case ($1,000), talks to a teammate at a windy Packer Backer picnic.

FOUR PHOTOS

BOB GOMEL

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION