Raccoon coats were long worn by nineteenth-century American men who adopted them as a practical emblem of their fur-trapping experiences on the frontier. Early photographs show men wearing smartly tailored versions in the 1890s. Raccoon coats are most closely associated with male college students of the 1920s, however. The ukelele-strumming college students of the 1920s made the garb a fashion craze on campuses from coast to coast. The craze reached its peak in 1928, when George Olsen (1893–1971) and his band (George Olsen and His Music) recorded the lyrics to a peppy dance tune called "Doin' the Raccoon," that described how "rough guys, tough guys, men of dignity / Join the raccoon coat fraternity." The song's opening stanza declared that no respectable frat boy could afford to be caught dead without a raccoon coat as his principal fashion statement: "College men, knowledge men / Do a dance called raccoon; / It's...