Welcome To the Golden Age of Coats
Last winter, I was in a little bibelot of a town we call Paris, taking a look at The Row’s debut menswear collection. Because it’s so understated, The Row’s clothing really demands examination. The details are so minute, the “twists” on the “classics with a twist” so subtle, that if you’re willing to really spend some time, you’ll be rewarded by a new understanding of this particularly ascetic monastic order of minimalism. My mind was totally blown, for example, by a peacoat with a shawl collar. A totally minor tweak, but the peacoat is one of those unchanging fashion classics that rarely gets tweaked. It’s almost like a pictogram: close your eyes, and you see a navy wool coat that hits at the hip, double-breasted with those giant notch lapels.
“This is a jacket,” I thought, “that believes it’s a coat.” What a first-class concept! But this is no chihuahua that believes it’s a Great Dane. It’s got big-dog bite: you could put it over a big bulky sweater and walk around, I don’t know, an outdoor mall all day, or keep warm at a football game, or you could put it over a T-shirt and wear it around Art Basel while you’re in Miami (bon courage to those who dare to venture into the neon city wearing The Row!).
As the weather turned colder, or coldish, I noticed that all the best stuff arriving in stores and online had one thing in common: they were coats. Designers are doing some of their strongest work right now in coats. The most important item in menswear right now is a coat—usually giant, though not exclusively. Go to a brunch hotspot or a kinda nice or even really nice bar in a major northeastern city, and you’ll see guys (and women, actually) wearing really nice coats over otherwise dumpy outfits. The effect is fabulous: everyone looks a little royal, a new twist on the “I can afford not to care” thing that dominated the 2010s. If the fleece was the must-have statement outerwear of last season, this season’s must-have has swung in a wildly more formal direction.
Welcome to the Golden Age of Coats. Make yourself comfortable—take off your shoes! Just keep your coat on.
Of course, coats have been iconic in menswear since time immemorial. But as we move into a new era that merges an appreciation for classic style—for “good taste”—with performative dressing, nothing seems more right than an opulent statement coat over a simple outfit. (While it was Pharrell Williams wearing a dress on the cover of our November issue that drove everyone wild with excitement, the accompanying photo spread was an all-out celebration of this look, with Williams wearing insane coats over jeans with his Chanel loafers.)
Raf Simons’s Fall 2019 collection, for example, was almost like an old-school couture show in its declarative offering of a whole slew of coats as if they were entire ensembles—a handful of silhouettes in a range of colorways and formalness, with coats for day and coats for night. Perhaps the most intriguing (and most wearable) style was an ’80s-style, Yves Saint Lauren-y overcoat with giant notch lapels and an I-am-that-bitch-sized shoulder that tied at the waist like a robe. The formal and the informal merged. The coat would look great over a plain gray sweatsuit with loafers.
Even the puffer, second only to the sweatshirt in the bible of streetwear upscaling, is getting the drama queen treatment. Totokaelo is stocking Balenciaga’s floor-length fuchsia puffer, which brings a new level of drama to what is generally considered fashion’s most pragmatic outerwear. Finally: a coat that takes you from dog walking to the opera.
While a coat that kisses the ground you walk on is ideal, it isn’t the only great coat on the scene this season. Celine, which is quite suit-forward, is also making an art out of covering said suits with coats, like herringbone wool robe silhouettes that fasten with tassels or plain old buttons. Even more elegant is Engineered Garments’ leopard-print coat, which, like some of Cristobal Balenciaga’s famous ladies-who-lunch-and-bid-at-Sotheby’s coats, wraps across the body and fastens at the neck like a cape with sleeves. From far away, it almost looks like a smock—vaguely radical for outerwear.
It seems curious that fantastic coats are emerging just as fashion begins to take climate change seriously, and global warming has even negated that seasonal urge to procure huge coats. So a proposition: think of the new golden age of coats as gowns. The purpose isn’t to keep you warm, really. The purpose is to make an entrance, and then remain a presence—at, you know, brunch.
Originally Appeared on GQ
