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4 hours ago
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I shouldn’t tell you this, because I’m effectively doing myself out of a job, but there’s really only one thing you need to know about fashion this season. I mean, there are a thousand and one ways to tie a scarf or curate your necklaces or layer your knitwear – and I fully intend to bend your ear about all of them over the coming months – but at a pinch you could follow this single dictum, ignore absolutely all of the rest of it and be good to go.
Your coat needs to be long. That’s it, that’s the big news. If your coat reaches almost to your ankles, you will look as if you know your stuff style-wise. Like your hairstyle or the width of your jeans, the length of your coat is one of those details that is a fashion tell. It does not lie. It gives you away, for better or for worse. Someone walking towards you will register it, and it will place you on the style spectrum before they are close enough to see your face.
I know, I know, we’re supposed to be over trends these days. But this is one of those big-picture shifts that is more than just a fad. What looks right has always changed over time, this is true of everything: architecture, clothes, the lettering and layout of a restaurant menu. All of it. So just because you don’t sweat the small stuff any more, fashion-wise, doesn’t mean you can’t take an interest in which way the winds of change are blowing, right?
So it’s bye bye to knee-length coats, for now. Jackets are still fine, because that’s a totally different set of rules. But if you are wearing a Proper Coat, it should be well below your knees. The dapper, sharp, Crombie-esque knee length coat is to be relegated to the attic for now. Your outerwear should either end at your waist, hip or upper thigh, or continue down to your calves.
As always with coats, the change in shape is partly about the clothes we are wearing underneath. Straight cut, knee-length coats were a logical top layer when our trousers were snug. But now trousers have got a little looser, a neat, snug fitting coat has the wrong proportions – so coats have got looser and longer in lockstep.
I spent most of last winter in my beloved & Other Stories black coat – oversized wool with soft shoulders, full sleeves, a self-tie belt and a shin-grazing hemline – which I will be dragging down from its attic box shortly for a shakeout and some judicious ironing. This is an easy option, but the fashion news this season is that the long coat is growing in confidence and attitude. The plain, dark wool long coats that me and everyone else wore last winter are now joined by bold checks, full-length faux furs and long leather coats.
Burberry and MaxMara are high-fashion luxury brands whose bread-and-butter is the coat. So when both of them go big on a trend, we can be fairly confident of the fashion forecast. At MaxMara in Milan, cosy shearlings had dramatic, sumptuous collars and floor-sweeping hems. There was even a double layer of long, in a floor-length furry gilet worn open over a belted quilted ankle-length coat. In London, on the Burberry catwalk at Tate Britain, all the celebrity models – the images the brand knew would get the most eyeballs – featured long coats. Richard E Grant was swaddled in a giant’s dressing gown, the belt knotted, while Lesley Manville disproved the adage that you have to be tall to wear a long coat. Manville, a petite 1.57m (5ft 2in), wore an inky, devoré-flocked, tightly belted trenchcoat which stopped just a few inches above her ankles.
It might feel a bit early to be talking winter coats, but it’s not. It would be good to start mulling this over, because it will shape your look this season. When we get into the coldest months of the year, your coat is pretty much all most people see. It is your personality, and that makes it a big decision. With the emphasis, this year, on big.
Model: Ellen at Body London. Hair and make up: Delilah Blakeney using Olaplex and Makeup by Mario. Coat, £249, John Lewis. Silk scarf jumper, £169, Jigsaw. Jeans, £280, Paige. Loafers, £330, by Aeyde, from Net-a-Porter. Earrings, £34.99, Pilgrim. Belt, from a selection, by Amanu, from fwrd.com
