After a summer spent trolling around Italy—most of which I spent on the back of a pink scooter wearing fingerless gloves and laughing drolly at my Italian compatriots’ anecdotes about hunting for wild boars—I must admit that I was a bit disappointed to return to Cambridge.

It’s just hard for me—as it would be for any intelligent person—to bid goodbye to the sight of 11-year-olds wearing t-shirts with adorable phrases like “Sexy Bitch” printed on them, or to bus drivers wearing wrap-around Armani sunglasses.

Therefore, my return has been fraught with a pain not felt by most Harvardians who study abroad over the summer. Many of them spend time in a foreign land by building automated sewage systems out of discarded lead pipes, living in burlap huts, and showering with a hollow gourd.

These poor souls inevitably suffer from severe culture shock when they re-enter the United States. They find it materialistic and complain about the sheer surplus of caramel macchiatos. This is not what happened to me when I returned from Bella Italia.

If I did experience any culture shock, it was in the jarring lack of fur in the already borderline-gauche clothing worn by denizens of Cambridge.

Fur is everywhere in this year’s designer collections. It decorates the outside of pockets and the tops of handbags. It shows up on the lining and the cuffs of pretty much every coat that I saw modeled for the season.

Though fur has always been a steady seller (specially among the elderly and J.Lo), this year, fur has become ubiquitous and—strangely enough—PETA has been much less of a bother about it than usual.

In Italy, fur was everywhere. The entire top floor of every Italian’s favorite department store, Fendi, was covered in pelts of every size, shape, and color.

Fur collars even decorated the tops of suits in Armani shops (though I doubt that will catch on with the males of America).

And no one seemed to object to the requisite murder of small animals! Considering that Italy is a country where people feel comfortable spraying graffiti on priceless Roman artifacts, that’s quite an accomplishment.

Yet in Cambridge, where the weather has become rather cold by now, there is a veritable lack of fur on anything. This fact isn’t particularly startling, I suppose.

Most people who live in Cambridge wear breathable organic fabrics that are also, somehow, waterproof. Wearing a fur coat seems indulgent, and makes you a walking ketchup-target for one of those hoodlums from the Papercut Zine Library. And ketchup is no fun.

On a pragmatic level, however, fur is incredibly warm and incredibly natural. What’s more natural than wearing a dead thing’s skin? Truly, fur is the very best example of “organic” material.

And, if you’re morally troubled by fur, you can always wear fake fur in order to participate in the trend. This is what Pamela Anderson does, and her example—as usual—is a shining beacon that guides us all.



Three Furr-ific Tips for Fur Followers:



1) Do not wear a coat made entirely of fur. Subtlety is key, and fur should appear only sparingly. That way, no one will compare you to a creature from “Star Wars.”



2) “Dr. Zhivago” is overrated. Therefore, do not wear a fur hat with your fur coat.



3) Do not wear a pink, fake fur hat to the MTV Video Music Awards and then marry Tommy Lee again. That is bad decision making.



—Columnist Rebecca M. Harrington can be reached at harring@fas.harvard.edu.