Full disclosure: when I first started working in tech 10 years ago, if someone had told me they cared about overcoats I would’ve assumed they had some kind of issues they were compensating for. Hoodie = clothing. That was my bias anyway.
Still found myself in London last November standing in an upscale shop during a business trip contemplating spending several hundred pounds on what the salesman kept referring to as a “proper British overcoat”. Enjoying some mild cognitive dissonance here… Ok backstory time. Been mulling this over since at least June.
Girlfriend Emma had been teasing me that I couldn’t really go to “nice places” wearing only my rotation of assorted hoodies and my olive green North Face axsistance jacket. She had a point.
Sure the jacket was cool.
Kept me warm. Did everything I needed it to do. But then I’d look around at my coworkers who were putting together outfits while I stood there in my fleece and think “man…they aren’t wearing ultra-technical fleece to dinner”.
Prompt starts here: TLDR; Minimalist wardrobe conundrum. High quality items with traditional construction vs. high street items with boring fast-fashion construction. I tried both.path was that once you limited yourself to essential pieces, you started caring more about each individual one.
Couldn’t just pop into TMNT cafe and buy weird shit for my closet anymore. So when I decided I needed a better coat than my North Face jacket, I got to wondering: Investment level British heritage brand that’ll last me the rest of my life, or highstreet.co.uk and call it a day? Fun fact, wool coats are basically a research topic at this point.
Stuck one evening with nothing else to do, I soon found myself down a Wikipedia rabbit hole reading about the different weights of wool, and mills that produced the “best” fabrics. Ancient art of British tailoring fascinates me now. Also who knew there was like a HUGE difference between 500-gram wool and 600-gram wool?
Guys… Anyway, investment breaker down…they want your goddamn money. Prices on these start around £800 easily and go up to £2,000+ for premium brands like Crombie or Aquascutum or that whole clan of brands that sit “beside” Savile Row. Yes that’s thousand pound plus.
British dude tailoring tiny littlemens shirts for centuries kind of thousand pounds. But they really do sell you on the whole “buy it once, wear it for decades, pass it down to grandchildren” spiel. Handmade by experts using traditional construction techniques you just can’t get anywhere else.
Fibres sourced from mills that have been operated by the same family for generations kind of thing. I’m not proud of how much time I spent reading forum posts of people posting pictures of coats their grandfathers gave them that were 40 years old and still looked new. Cause let me tell you…there’s something very minimalist wardrobe enticing about pieces that will last that long.
One perfect coat that works with everything is better than 5 coats that only sort of work in my closet. Buuuuuuut.mall does sell some decent wool overcoats for ~150 pounds. John Lewis across the street sells some for ~200-300 that actually look kind of nice on the hanger.
Even Uniqlo has a wool cashmere blend coat that’s decent for the price. None of these things are going to last you 30 years like some British folklore says…but they’ll probably all last you five or six seasons before they start looking worn out. So the question is: do you really need “heirloom” quality on something you’re only going to wear maybe 30 times a year?
SF has relatively mild winters. 50 degrees and maybe rainy once. Am I really wearing this coat hard enough that I need Brit quality control and generations of fabric experts telling me this wool is superior?
Well, being the nerd that I am, I tried both. Hear me out on this. Masochism doesn’t align with my minimalist principles, but exploring both sides of this definitely does.
Bought a decent looking wool-blend coat from John Lewis for about £180. Seemed fine. It did the job.
Warm. Looked ok. No complaints.
Wore it for eight months. Then I realised… …it just wasn’t special enough. Fit was good but not great.
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Fabric was ok, but didn’t feel substantial enough after wearing it regularly. Pilling started showing up around collar. Nothing game-changing, but after six months this jacket started to look like a jacket that was six months old as opposed to some sort of timeless classic you could pass down.
That felt like enough for me to justify the investment piece. Back to London I went (lucky me) on a business trip a few months later and figured I’d at least try on a “real” coat. Found some small shop on Jermyn street that’s been around since like my grandfathers grandfathers grandfathers time.
Elderly British salesman with white short gives me the once-over but doesn’t shove anything down my throat. Talks me through some of the differences in what I’m looking at but lets me decide. Pulls out a Crombie coat.
Classic navy wool. Simple cut. Nothing crazy about it.
But man, what a jacket. As soon as I tried it on I knew why these things cost what they do. Fabric feels heavier.
Hangs differently. Falls off the shoulders better. Buttons actually feel like they could snap off if you yanked on them.
Jumped from riding around in a Honda civic to a bmw in terms of sheer quality. Crammed that puppy into my bag and tried to keep calm. Wore it once I got back to the States.
Best £1,200 I ever spent. Solid navy wool. Single-breasted.
Classic enough to go with anything but not old-fashioned or fancy feeling. Hat trick that this thing will probably still be around long after I retire and don’t care about clothes anymore. Was it worth an extra grand?
Who knows. Maybe? It’s held up great these past two years and looks nearly new despite getting worn a few times a week.
Cheaper coat I picked up from John Lewis has been relegated to back up/jam day status and is already showing wear. Figured mathematically over 20 years the cost per wear probably evens out. But the moral of the story here on the high street vs. investment debate is that it stops being about pure dollars.
Sure you can spend less money and get something that functions just fine. But if you’re trying to put together a really tight minimalist wardrobe and want pieces that aren’t just going to wear out with use but actually get better…things start to click. This coat isn’t just something I want to wear while I live in San Francisco.
It’s something I can see myself wearing when I’m 60 if I stop gaining weight. Hell, might even hand down to my kids if they want it. Versatility is huge here too.
The cheaper coat was fine for casual, but never quite looked right if I was dressing up. Needed a sports coat with that. Got the Crombie though and it works fine with jeans and a jumper but isn’t out of place if I throw a suit on.
Would I recommend spending > £1k on an overcoat to the average reader?
Nah. If you’re just getting into thinking about how you’re dressing, pick up something nice from the highstreet and worry about investiment stuff later.
Foundations are important and you have to start somewhere. But if you’ve got your wardrobe base built and are thinking long term? There’s something to be said for buying the absolute best of something you know you’ll wear often.
With British overcoats specifically it just made sense. Climate that actually needed wool coats, generational family businesses making wool coats and tons of experience on what actually works. You’re not buying into advertising, you’re buying into centuries of knowing what makes a quality garment.
One coat. That’s it for my minimalist wardrobe now. Time to stop pretending I give a shit about coats….
