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Furriers are even cutting capers with the traditional mink. Bergdorf Goodman's Emeric Partos punches holes in white mink coats, fills them with dark mink. Kaplan, who jazzes up his regular ranch-mink coats with shirt-cuff sleeves and double-breasted brass buttons, features a striking horizontally worked white mink with three wide black-velvet bands, and a $5,000 reversible "gaudy mink" that is gold lamé on one side, natural ranch on the other. Philosophizes Kaplan, who came within a thesis of a Ph.D. in philosophy: "For years, buying a mink was such a serious thing. When you spend that much money, you should have fun, not suffer." But then, to most people, any $4,000 mink is a fur piece away from suffering.