LAST month, Johnny Weir, the United States figure skater, switched one of his costumes for the Vancouver Olympics after he said he received threats from anti-fur activists for accessorizing his already colorful wardrobe with just a touch of white fox. At almost the same moment, fashion designers in New York were showing fall collections with so much fur that they seemed to collectively stick a thumb in the eye of political correctness.ERIC WILSON

Wearing the color black and mourning used to be occasions going hand in hand, black a neutral among other colors was always offered a step treatment, a subject of detest, something which everyone would like to avoid coming across.


With painters painting black as evil, authors writing about the negativity associated with, it was nothing more then a symbol of fatality and casualty. For example the painting called Portrait of Madame X, by John Singer Sargent.

First the world war-1 and next the deadly Spanish flu knocking the doors, many lifes were lost in Europe, as a result women appearing in black in public became a common site. To add to that since during the Victorian and the Edwardian ages, a widow was expected to wear several stages of mourning dress for at least two years.

Deep or full mourning would require them to conceal themselves in complete black clothing with no decoration being encouraged at all for the first year. Even the fabric chosen used to be coarser and of most inferior quality possible. During the next year however they could afford wearing silk in black.fibre2fashion