My love of beaver lamb started in the 60s when I was a little boy. My mother had one, and the feel and the softness of it used to transfix me. I remember cuddling up to her while she wore it on long coach journeys going to see my grandmother.

When I grew a bit older and there was no-one else in the house I used to secretly put on her beaver lamb coat - it felt absolutely divine.

In my late teens when I went to University I bought my first beaver lamb coat of my own, which turned out to be too small (I didn’t have the nerve to try it on before buying it). It wasn’t until a few years later that I found one in my size - I'm 6' tall with a 42" chest and quite long arms. I remember trying it on - which took a lot of courage, believe me! - in the second-hand clothes shop where I bought it. The lady said it looked fantastic on me, but I felt really self-conscious as a man wearing a fur coat in public for the first time - it was very rare for men to wear fur coats in the UK in the 1970s - even more so today. Nowadays I’m much more relaxed about wearing fur, and I do so whenever it pleases me.

I now have fifty beaver lamb coats in my collection; all but ten in the 1950s style with large shawl collars, and all but two in very good to excellent condition. Forty-five of my coats are women’s coats and I have five men’s beaver lamb / mouton coats. One of my latest is a men’s Canadian mouton with opossum collar. This is one of four beaver lamb / mouton coats I own with a different fur on the collar; the others are a Canadian mouton jacket with fox fur collar and trim, a Canadian mouton with racoon collar and a beaver lamb jacket with pale mink Peter Pan (rounded) collar (for more on Peter Pan collars see my site devoted to the perfect collar).

I also have fourteen coats of other fur types, including a sheared nutria jacket (from the USA), a Canadian muskrat coat, a Canadian otter coat, an English musquash coat and a Canadian full-length racoon coat that has a lovely huge portrait collar. I do love my fur coats to have large collars!