Naked in Mink

aka: Modesty Fur Coat

"I wore this for you, Mr. Senator. Look what I didn't wear!"

"And I started thinking about what would be 'awesome' for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be if I left this stage tonight and went back to my hotel room. And Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said 'have a good time.' That would be awesome!
[Beat]
It ain't gonna happen, but that would be awesome."

— Bill Engvall

Going out naked is embarrassing, and could get you arrested. Well if you have nothing else handy, a fur coat, wrap or cape will do. It's stylish, covers up all the naughty bits, and is great fanservice.

Yet, this is quite often a deliberate seduction move, combining with Ready for Lovemaking. Why is this such a turn on? Rule 34, of course. And in many ways it's better at implying actual nudity than a thong bikini (but not a wet T-shirt).

And not even a full coat is necessary. In the early days of Hollywood, glamor shots would often have an actress wear a fur wrap, and be shot in a way that looks as though she wore nothing else. For some reason, the Hays office allowed it, probably because they weren't actually naked. But the allusion in those is still clear.

Sometimes this is a ploy to distract one's husband from the fact that a fair chunk of the family finances were just sunk into this fur coat.

Yet other times, there is no seduction, and the fur coat is just an emergency cover up, just often a sexy one.

Now this trope doesn't count if you actually see any nudity. Then it's just a nude shot with the fur as an accessory.

A Sub-Trope of Pretty in Mink.

A Sister Trope to Sexy Coat Flashing, Going Fur a Swim (a g-rated variation).

Compare Fur Bikini, Godiva Hair (hair instead of fur), Naked Apron (which is something similar with a cooking apron), Modesty Towel (ditto with a towel), Cleavage Window, Diamonds in the Buff, Going Commando.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Peacemaker Kurogane: Nothing screams "villain" more than having Suzu seductively wearing nothing but a loose, black fur robe.

Films — Live-Action

• 42nd Street had a really subtle one. In the Busby Berkeley Number, there was a woman in a fur-trimmed dress, with a huge white fur muff. If you paid close attention, you'd see she was actually wearing a fur trimmed skirt with a white fur wrap. The muff was constantly held over her midriff to make it not so obvious that the wrap was the only thing keeping her you-know-what covered. This was before the Hays Office became as powerful as it was (although it was started a few years before), and may have even led to its rise to power.
• Almost Famous has an almost naked example: Penny Lane dancing and walking around in nothing more than her fur coat and panties.
• Breaking and Entering (2006): During Will's stake-out of the burgled offices, the prostitute Oana sits in his car because wearing a fur coat with nothing underneath is cold.
• In A Fine Mess, Claudia Pazzo (Maria Conchita Alonso) arrives at Spence Holden's (Ted Danson) apartment wearing a white fox fur coat. Spence asks if he could take her coat and Claudia says, "Sure", while shedding the coat◊ and walked into Spence's bedroom wearing only panties.
• Jean in The Greeks Had a Word for Them seduces a man this way.
• In Just the Way You Are, Susan hangs out in her room at the ski resort wearing a fur coat and nothing else.
• Michele Carey does this for Elvis in Live A Little Love A Little.
• A rare instance with a guy was in Lover Come Back, when Rock Hudson was abandoned naked on the beach by Doris Day (and he deserved it). So he was later picked up by a truck carrying fur coats, and he was forced to wear one to get back into his apartment. Since we now know Rock was gay, this may or may not be Hilarious in Hindsight.
• In Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Delysia Lafosse takes off the silk robe she seduced a man in the night before, then puts on a fur coat with nothing else under it just before her boyfriend comes in. And... really enjoys it.
  Delysia: There is something so sensual about the feeling of fur against skin!
• Jeanette MacDonald is nearly Naked In Mink in Monte Carlo: on her wedding day, she leaves the dress draped over a chair and hops on a train wearing just a fur coat over her underwear.
• At one point in The Natural, Memo Paris shows up in Roy's hotel room wearing a fur coat, which she then drops before joining him in bed.
• Sean Young pulls this with a fur coat in No Way Out (1987).
• Ulla shows herself like this to Benny in the first Olsen-banden movie.
• In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Olga Beriosova (Lesley-Anne Down) seduces Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) in a scene that is beyond words.
  "But he has been shot. And I do not carry a gun."
  "Obviously not, no..."
• At the beginning of Stir Crazy, Gene Wilder's character is working as an in-house detective at a department store when he accuses a female shopper (whom he recognizes as a famous actress) of both a.) shoplifting the fur coat she's wearing and b.) having nothing on underneath. In the next scene he's been fired from the job for harassing said customer; we never learn whether he was correct in either of his assumptions.
• An interesting example in X-Men: Days of Future Past: Mystique seduces a mark while in the form of a woman wearing a cocktail dress under a fur coat. When she shapeshifts back to her nude blue form, the coat remains- apparently, unlike the rest of her clothing, it wasn't shapeshifted from her body. She proceeds to drop the coat and kick the poor sucker's butt.

Literature

• In The Professional Killers by J.T. Edson, the police raid the house of a burglar and find his girlfriend wearing a recently stolen mink stole and nothing else.
• In Leopold Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, this is featured prominently amidst other fetishes the author diplays.

• At the end of The Widow of Desire there is a fur Auction, and actress Diana Darbee wears almost nothing under a pile of Russian lynx skins, as publicity for the fur company she was hired to model for.
• The female protagonist of The Zolotov Affair spends almost the entire novel stuck wearing only a mink fur coat, since she is constantly on the run from either the authorities or spies and thus rarely gets a chance to change.

Live-Action TV

• In 'Allo 'Allo! Helga once tried to seduce information out of Renee by going to him wearing only a fur coat and (apparently) three well-placed swastikas. She was unsuccessful because it was the morning after his bachelor party (and it was implied that he had slept with almost every other woman in the cast the night before).
• In the Castle episode where a soap opera's head writer is killed, one of the stars becomes a suspect because the writer planned to kill her off (her character, that is) for sleeping with the writer's husband. When confronted, her alibi is seducing one of the male writers to advocate for her to the execs. When he's asked to confirm it, he describes her arriving at his front door wearing a fur coat. Just a fur coat.
• CSI: NY: Sheldon's girlfriend, Camille, arrives at his apartment wearing a fur coat and when he says he's had a really tiring day, she lets it slide to the floor, revealing that it was all she had on. He hastily ushers her in.
• Kimberly Cryder in Dallas wore a sable coat to meet JR, and then took it off just to show what he could have had.
• Happened in Desperate Housewives with Bree arriving at her husband Orson's dental practice wearing only a fur. Cue coat drop. She also did this once for Rex but was wearing red lingerie underneath on that occasion.
• There was a series called Good And Evil, and in one scene, the "Evil" character tried to seduce a guy by wearing nothing but a sable coat and flashing him. We only saw her from behind, so it counts as this trope.
• In the Grimm episode "Bears Will be Bears", Gilda seduces her boyfriend by suggestively opening a fur coat she's wearing to reveal her lingerie-clad body.
• Jake and the Fatman: In "Second Time Round",Femme Fatale Carolyn Bruce returns from blowing up a patsy in order to allow her blackmailer boyfriend to fake his death wearing a full length white fur coat.She climbs into-bed with him and then shrugs off the coat to reveal Toplessness from the Back.
• An episode of Mad Men had Pete Campbell fantasizing about a woman he had recently slept with surprising him in his office wearing nothing but a fur coat and heels.
• In an early episode of Mission: Impossible (Steven Hill days) Martin Landau is masquerading as a Latin American dictator and Barbara Bain as a total stranger he has summoned to his room. When one of the real dictator's aides start asking Landau questions that have him stumped, Bain appears at the bedroom door wearing nothing but a fur coat. The aide realizes he should leave. When Landau tells her that was quite a show, she opens the door revealing the two guards they have previously subdued and tied up and says "You should have seen it from their side."
• Murder, She Wrote: The episode School for Scandal has the character Daphne return from a swim wearing a fur suit, and as shown (though not to the viewer, this being Murder, She Wrote) when she flashes everyone upon retiring for the night, nothing else. This first just seems to be to establish how irreverent Daphne is, but later undermines her confession^note done to take the heat from her mother, who in turn had done the same, both mistakenly thinking the other had done it when Jessica points out she'd clearly shown she wasn't wearing enough clothing to conceal the murder weapon.
• The picture comes from the Marilyn Monroe episode of Quantum Leap. Her assistant tries on one of her fur coats, and comes this close to showing that was about all she was wearing.
• An episode of Sledge Hammer! does an homage to Noir Detectives. An early scene has a wealthy client in Sledge's office wearing a fur coat. He offers that she take it off, but she replies that she just came from modeling for the art school down the street and is naked underneath. He responds, "in that case, I insist."
• Carmella does this in The Sopranos episode "Funhouse" when Tony gets her a full length sable coat, and insists they make love with her wearing the coat.
• In the first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Ilithyia somehow sneaks into a military camp wearing nothing but a fur coat to surprise her husband in his tent.
• In That '70s Show, Kitty tells Donna that when Red left for Korea, she gave him a budoir photo of her wearing nothing but a fur coat.
• On Ugly Betty, Wilhelmina first tried to seduce Bradford this way. She also used this trope to counter a fur protester wearing nothing but burlap. Both times she wore one side off the shoulder to make it clear there was nothing underneath.
• The Professionals. In "The Female Factor", a High-Class Call Girl has sneak out on her pimp after coming home and removing her clothes, so she puts on the mink coat, removes her pumps and climbs out the rear window. She's later found dead in the river stark naked, with Doyle and Bodie arguing over whether the absence of the expensive coat means she was murdered or someone just stole it after she committed suicide.
• The temple seduction scene from the Xena: Warrior Princess episode "Amphipolis Under Siege" where Xena greets Ares wearing nothing but a fur cloak.

Music

• There's footage of Eartha Kitt performing "Santa Baby" back in the day, barely covered by a length of white fur. It can be watched here.
• "Give Me a Try" by The Wombats
  But I just need you in that fur coat
  With only my necklace on underneath

Magazines

• Many of the models in Playboy appear wearing almost nothing but a fur (usually the covers, as inside the issue shows the nudity), like Barbi Benton in a sable coat◊ in the December '85 issue or Janet Pilgrim in a white mink stole in an early Christmas centerfold.
• In a 1999 issue of Vanity Fair, Charlize Theron posed nude save for being wrapped in a full length white fox coat. The cover even declared her a "White Hot Venus◊".

Recorded And Stand Up Comedy

• When Bill Engvall was discussing the proper meaning of "awesome" he brought up what would truly be awesome to him.
  And I started thinking about what would be awesome for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be if I left this stage tonight and went back to my hotel room. And Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said "have a good time." That would be awesome!
  (beat)
  It ain't gonna happen; but that would be awesome.
• In a Tim Allen comedy bit, he tells about his wife trying this on him with a new coat she bought behind his back. His response? "Don't stain it; we're taking it back in the morning." He also made a point that it didn't work in reverse. She'd hardly let buying a sports car slide if he rolled up in it wearing nothing but driving gloves.

Theatre

• Not Now Darling, a farce by Ray Cooney and John Chapman involving shenanigans at an exclusive London fur store. A Running Gag involves a model in a fur coat who claims she's got nothing underneath. Whenever someone displays skepticism over this, she opens her coat so they can have an eyeful (she's always facing away from the audience of course).
• In the Cedar Rapids Opera production of Strauss's Salome, after Salome has ended the Dance of the Seven Veils clad only in black lingerie, the Page of Herodias covers her with a fur coat.

Real Life

• According to Princess Diana's (admittedly somewhat "reality-challenged") former butler, he would often smuggle men into the palace in the trunk of his car, to be greeted by the Princess wearing only a fur coat and jewels.
• Marianne Faithfull, in the legendary Mars bar incident, was allegedly only wearing a fur rug. Her autobiography confirms the fur rug, but denies the bit with the Mars bar.
• A few pin-ups of Dita Von Teese featured this.
• Recounted in Not Since Carrie by Ken Mandelbaum: The musical At The Grand closed before it went to Broadway because its star, Paul Muni, refused to sign a new contract after his preliminary one was up. The other actors were pissed, as the show had been doing good business in previews on the road. By way of revenge, during her curtain call at the final show, Joan Diener turned upstage to face Muni (who hated scantily-clad chorus girls and cleavage) and opened her full-length mink coat "to reveal herself naked but for a long stemmed rose between her legs."
• British English as spoken Oop North has the idiomatic term she's all fur coat and no knickers!, spoken disapprovingly concerning a Certain Type Of Woman Who Is No Better Than She Ought To Be. The "no knickers" part can refer, darkly, to the occupation of the lady in question and explains to the satisfaction of the listener just what she does to be able to afford expensive furs. (And why wearing clothing under the fur is optional).
• Kawésqar, one of the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego, traditionally wore nothing but guanaco skin cloaks to survive from the harsh, stormy climate of the Strait of Magellan.

---