Perhaps no film better illustrates the role of the mink coat in American pop culture than BUtterfield 8, the 1960 film starring Elizabeth Taylor as a promiscuous socialite whose theft of a fur sets off a chain of events that leads to her tragic demise.

At the time, a mink coat was the height of luxury and elegance. The decades-long Blackglama "What Becomes a Legend Most?" campaign, which advertised coats made from lustrous black American minks from the Great Lakes region, featured a who's who of actresses and divas, including Bette Davis, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand in 1968, and Janet Jackson in 2010 and 2011.