FASHION
STYLE NOTES
THE COATS TO INVEST IN THIS FALL
The coat was the loudest thing in the room this season. Louise Trotter gave the back half of her second Bottega Veneta collection to outerwear, and Daniel Lee closed London Fashion Week on a show built almost entirely from coats. The same thing happened in New York and Paris: houses that spent last year on the dress or the trouser put their best thinking into the layer over the top.
Two things changed that matter if you are spending. The line has come back in toward the body after several seasons of volume. And in everything that isn't tailoring, the cloth is doing more work than the cut, whether that means shearling, leather, or leather woven into strips.
Three categories follow. Each turned up in more than one city, which is the rough test of whether a shape has enough behind it to last past March.
By Ina Eliska
The Neat Double-Breasted Coat
Narrow through the body, buttoned high, lapels cropped short so they finish near the collarbone. Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander and Pieter Mulier in his last collection for Alaïa both cut it this way. Prada opened its Milan show with a run of tailored coats cut deliberately small.
Slim trouser, flat shoe, scarf tucked inside the collar. It holds for an office and for dinner after it.
The reference is Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, 1967. Yves Saint Laurent designed her entire wardrobe for the film, and almost none of it is loose.
Shearling
Calvin Klein is where it reads most clearly. Veronica Leoni pieced shearling into mismatched panels, tight curl set against long silky hair, and elsewhere let a collar grow until it took over the coat. What looked like fur on that runway was trimmed and dyed shearling.
Toteme took the softer route. Long-haired shearling cut into cocooning coats, and shearling used again as collar and lining on a belted parka.
Keep everything under it plain. A slim trouser or a jean, a flat boot, a knit beanie.
The Reworked Trench
Burberry gave the whole show to it, opening on a ruffled trench and closing on one in embossed vinyl, with leather and bouclé in between, and a London street map worked into the cloth of the one Lee said he wants for himself. Bottega's came in khaki with an intrecciato woven collar and an oversized contrasting belt, and again in strips of woven leather.
