At a formal dinner I attended recently, a woman in a backless, black Madame X type of gown left the table and returned a few minutes later in her fur coat.  You see, she had gotten the chills.  After we’d retired to the lounge some young men lifted the coat – a gorgeous, fluttering smoke-grey alpaca – and modeled it for jokey photos.  They were stylish in the ironically nerdy way, with clipped beards and horn-rimmed glasses.  Brandishing tumblers of scotch, with the coat thrown over their slim-fitting tuxedos,  each one looked effortlessly (and, perhaps, unwittingly) glamorous.

It takes a special kind of man to wear a fur.  GQ, an authority in such matters, recommends against it.  There was a time in the early twentieth century when it was socially acceptable for men to wear fur.  (Picture F. Scott Fitzgerald at a Princeton tailgate in a full-length beaver skin.)  But this was very simply to keep them warm.  Jim Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and other rock stars wore furs in the 1960’s, with a strong bohemian, androgynous edge.  Joe Namath wore furs through the 1970’s, as if headed out to the Playboy Mansion, although, perhaps to his credit, he never seemed entirely comfortable about it.  The men who wear furs best today are athletes and rock stars, who are best able the requisite hyper-masculine swagger.  For most rappers, like 50 Cent and Sean Combs, it’s just another cliche, along with private jets and Cristal.  But Kanye West takes it to another level, wearing full-length furs with astonishing ease, all about town, over his jeans and sneakers, and open in front, so that it’s perfectly clear he’s not trying to stay warm.  Like the young men in the grey alpaca, he’s not trying too hard, and he’s enjoying it.  A lot.

I bought the hype for “Watch the Throne,” the much-publicized album by Jay-Z and Kanye West.  I mean, I loved the hype.  I ran to the “Watch the Throne” pop-up store in SoHo, although by the time I got there, two days after the opening, it was already over.  The custom-desecrated Maybach from the “Otis” video was gone.  All that was left inside was a stepladder and some cleaning supplies.  The “Otis” video has got the two men, in jeans and white shirts, taking apart the car with blowtorches and then dancing around in an empty lot while four models drive the car around them in circles.  At one point Kanye does a joyful pantomime of airplane with arms outstretched, leaning precariously to one side.  The music is great but, to be honest, I don’t like Jay-Z and Kanye singing together in the same song.  They’re entirely different characters and each time they switch voices it seems like the song is restarting.  John and Paul never sang together, did they?

The imagery of the video, directed by Spike Jonze, is classy, what with the Maybach, the high-fashion-looking models, the restrained costumes, and the minimalist scenario.  It was filmed in LA and it captures the city’s wide-open feeling and its bright daylight just right.  But I wanted something bigger.  These are the two most glamorous, grown-up men in rap, and two of the most deeply musical.  In that sense the CD’s embossed gold-colored foil cover, designed by Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tischi, is the most compelling emblem for the project.  Complex, dense, and shadowed, it’s modern baroque, and hints at what these two artists do best.

There’s no shortage of spectacular imagery in “Runaway,” Kanye West’ surreal, deeply-imagined, 34-minute movie fantasia.  A sheep grazes on a hyper-green suburban lawn, a giant Michael Jackson head rolls through the desert, and a golden-skinned bird-lady falls from the sky.

But the most memorable image is a simpler one: two dozen black men and women sitting down at a formal dinner.  They’re wearing modern, unadorned, massively elegant white suits and gowns by Phillip Lim.  The cool, bluish lighting heightens the contrast of the clothing against their skin, shaping an image of startling glamor.