Number one: they HAVE to be long. An overcoat is not something that's two inches longer than your suit jacket; that’s called a car coat. That’s also called something you should stop wearing. Please immediately stop calling that an overcoat. Or even worse, certainly do not call that a top coat or a trench. Trenches are long. Why do you have all these brands cutting short coats, and calling them overcoats? It looks like a weird extended blazer. I feel like a proper overcoat is below the knee. Like that's the length. It is supposed to cover you. It's supposed to keep you warm, dry, and protected.
We cut our overcoats in a sort of un-constructed way. And when I say un-constructed, it’s the most misinterpreted menswear term, probably as much as what people think bespoke versus non bespoke is. A proper, un-constructed jacket means it has no guts. It is fabric sewn together. There is no canvasing, no shoulder padding, nothing. Although most people think that's the coolest thing in the world, “Oh my gosh, this can be so light and so breathable and blah blah, blah, blah.” But breathability has nothing to do with anything being un-constructed. That's another story. But un-constructed is not for the faint of heart. It is not for the neurotic. It's certainly not for anyone who's Type A. When you wear an un-constructed jacket, it is droopy, it has no structure, hence un-constructed.The inner front chest of the jacket has much more drape, the shoulder line is soft and natural there’s more and droopiness than you would normally be comfortable with. Be okay with that.
So going back to overcoats there’s a reason why we cut them un-constructed. I love using more luxe fabrics like cashmeres and alpacas for overcoats but those tend to be at weights of 500 grams and above, so we cut them un-constructed because you can't feel the droopiness and the unstructured-ness in the chest as much as you can with a jacket. It makes wearing the coat so much more fun, and so much easier! It allows you to wear this overcoat formally with a suit on or a black tie. Wear it however you want. Yet the next morning when you wake up, you can throw on that same coat with a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and some Belgian loafers or even sneakers, and just walk out the door for a cup of coffee. And you look chic in both ways.
The idea is that you have to kind of create your own lane, your own world, and your world can't be a plagiarized mimic of what someone wrote in a book or online. If you’re a shorter customer, cutting you a longer look, an elegantly longer coat will elongate you, flattering you and will make you look taller. The idea is that we're not trying to make you look taller because that might be physically impossible. But what we don't want to do is make you look shorter by making you a short jacket that goes to your upper thigh, and just the thought of that annoys me, and you look like this dumpy, frumpy person.
So guys, easy solution is buy longer overcoats. They're beautiful.