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A tiny peek into Dixon's closet

Laura Vozzella

June 20, 2008

Mayor Dixon, shown in this February 2007 photograph leaving a church, has had to decide where and where not to wear her fur coats. (Sun photo by Doug Kapustin / February 16, 2007)

Even before prosecutors started sniffing around for Sheila Dixon's fur coats, her people were worried.

Should the mayor wear fur?

Forget the animal-rights politics. Dixon, a black belt known to threaten bodily harm with high heels, said she'd take care of any PETA types who'd dare douse her with red paint.

Dixonworld was worried about racial politics.

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Fur plays fine in black churches and neighborhoods, where it is seen as a symbol of success. But in white areas, be they working-class or upscale, not so much. Roland Park dowagers might have minks in their closets, but that doesn't mean they want to see their mayor in one.

Why not?

Whites and blacks alike buy furs, but they wear them differently, said Toni James, who owns Katwalk Boutique in Mount Vernon with husband Justin James.

White buyers tend to want minks with long, traditional styling, reserving them for formal evening affairs such as a gala or the opera, Toni James said. Black customers tend to buy more "fashion-forward" jackets with dyed fur and edgier styling, "a hipster type of coat" worn for day or night, she said.

Given that, I'm told, Dixon and her staff reached a consensus: In West Baltimore churches, go ahead and flaunt it; but for the likes of Lauraville and Guilford, leave the mink and Persian lamb behind.

(At least two winters ago, presumably before the fur strategy was settled, Dixon was spotted in her long mink at Jimmy's in Fells Point. She was having breakfast, perhaps after church.)

Is every fur-wearing pol so mindful of demographics? Not Comptroller Joan Pratt. When deciding what to wear, she checks the clock, calendar and thermometer, not the census.

Said Pratt, who declined to describe her own fur(s): "Usually, I would say, wear it to after-5 p.m. affairs from November to March when the temperature is 40 and below."

Fur coats have threatened other political hides.

Richard Nixon gave his famous Checkers speech to put down rumors of a wifely mink, fessing up to receiving the cocker spaniel as a gift but swearing that Pat had only a "respectable Republican cloth coat."

Political lesson: Cop only to live fur.

Baltimore's fashionista mayor hasn't settled for respectable cloth coats, even the Democratic variety.

"I own several [furs]," Dixon said at a news conference this week. She was responding to a question from WBAL-TV's David Collins, who asked: "Mayor Dixon, do you own a fur coat, and was it a gift, and from whom?"

Alas, Dixon was not to be drawn out on the subject of mayoral outerwear. "I own several," she repeated, "and I'm not going to go into my personal items that I own."

Obviously, Dixon has every right to wear fur unless, as prosecutors seem to suspect, there's something fishy about how she bagged it.

And you thought prosecutors were after shoes. So far as we know, their search warrant-assisted peek inside Dixon's closet did not yield an Imelda Marcos-style footwear cache. (Dixon admits to having a shoe fetish, or, as she once put it in an interview, "a foot fetish.")