I caught my first glimpse of the now-ubiquitous puffer jacket in Italy, back in the late 1990s. Work took me on several trips around that time to Milan, a city that in February can be dank, grey, cold and rather reminiscent of Manchester or Leeds. Older Italian women of that era still exhibited a devil-may-care attitude, chain-smoking and wearing full make-up as they teetered along in stilettos, mink collars pulled up to the cheekbones. But a younger generation of women had replaced the by-now morally dubious fur coat with something else: the ankle-length duvet, usually in black, chocolate brown or cream.
They looked strange at the time. Here in Britain, we’d endured the era of the ghastly technicolour ski jacket, but we weren’t yet wearing anything quite like this, at least not en masse. But in due course, the padded coat would become the default uniform of the twenty-first century, worn by men and women alike, everywhere from New York to Tokyo. As the years went by, we (almost) all embraced the puffer jacket: long ones, short ones, black, green or blue ones. And the puffer jacket embraced us. There’s no doubt that they’re the warmest option out there. Cocooning ourselves in down, or its man-made equivalent, has quite simply made British winters feel less uncomfortable — and if the temperature drops below zero, nothing else will do. But I, for one, am falling out of love with wearing what amounts to plastic packaging.
Winter will be with us for some time yet. In fact, if you measure your seasons astronomically, it’s dispiriting to realise that we’re only half way through. So for the second half of the season, with the bitterest of the weather hopefully behind us, I am committing to wearing my proper coat. And strange as it might sound, this small shift in dress is discernibly lifting my spirits. A woollen winter coat hangs differently and fits differently. You walk taller, you have a spring in your step, you feel more purposeful, more powerful, as the heavy lined wool swishes comfortingly around your legs.
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A well-cut coat complements your clothes rather than simply covering them up. It pulls an outfit together and demands to be paired with other endangered species of the sartorial world — a smart suit, a pair of polished leather shoes, a pencil skirt, a natty scarf. A traditional coat connects us back to earlier, more sophisticated times. And where puffer jackets are essentially unisex, traditional coats can emphasise the masculine or the feminine, or play subversively with gender expectations, if that’s your thing.
There’s a photograph of Cary Grant that periodically does the rounds on social media, with the caption: “Men, what’s stopping you from dressing like this?” Calf-length, black, double-breasted and sharp-shouldered, his coat looks the epitome of stylish masculinity over a three-piece suit as he strides along the city streets, hat in hand. Another classic image shows Noël Coward in a London railway station, soigné in beige and big lapels, a pile of books tucked under one arm. Let’s face it, wearing a puffer jacket over a suit just looks plain wrong.
A woman’s formal coat, meanwhile, can be cut to fit and flatter, a million times more elegant than rows of padded polyester. And where puffer jackets are essentially variations on a Michelin man theme, the variety of potential styles for a woollen coat is limitless. My own coats of beloved memory have included a short, scarlet 1960s-style one with oversized buttons, and a gorgeous long Laura Ashley coat with nipped in waist, which I dearly wish I hadn’t outgrown and given away. Currently I favour a knee-length navy coat with red piping, vaguely military yet feminine in shape, and a long black cloak-like one with a funnel neck and a nod to Claudia Winkleman in The Traitors.
Old coats have soul, embodying memories of our younger selves. Occasionally I resurrect a short black coat with a cascade of crimson flowers around the hem. I bought it from Monsoon in the mid 1990s, and thirty years on it still attracts comments and compliments from strangers in the street. A padded coat, on the other hand, whether high-end or cheap as chips, will never be a conversation-starter. Where a formal coat can say finesse, a puffer jacket can only ever say function. You can spend as much as you like on one and the effect will remain essentially the same.
One thing is for sure: nobody is ever likely to write an ode to a puffer jacket
Woollen coats also have staying power. They can be passed on and passed down as heirlooms. They can be properly cleaned, whereas there’s something unpleasantly tacky-feeling about a puffer jacket you’ve had for ages, even if it’s been through the washing machine countless times. Woollen coats can be mended or patched. Puffer jackets, on the other hand, can’t be darned if they get snagged on a bramble or nail and develop a hole. Once torn, they’re torn for good and are heading straight for landfill, where they will presumably remain, failing to biodegrade, for all eternity. Synthetic to the max, they’re as bad for the environment at the end of their working lives as they are at the start, when they rely heavily on fossil fuels in their production and leave a massive carbon footprint.
The importance of a good coat has been a recurring theme in literature. The central character of Gogol’s short story Shinél (The Overcoat) is a man who covets a good coat, scrimping and saving for one, and then investing it with hope and fantasies of elevated social status, until he is mugged and it is stolen. And at the end of Puccini’s La bohème, the philosopher Colline sings an aria to his old coat, which he needs to pawn to raise money to help the opera’s dying heroine. In poetic language, he thanks the garment for its long service, addressing it as a venerable old friend, and saying that it will now have a second chance at life. One thing is for sure: nobody is ever likely to write an ode to a puffer jacket.
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