A Brief Personal History In (Mostly) Vintage Coats

Feat. 8 styles that aren't puffy

My coats are the first thing you see walking into my apartment. All eleven of them: coats for as many years I’ve lived in New York. They are a fixture in my foyer, partly because of necessity—they are big and there are many, and they don’t fit into my closet—and also because I like looking at them. Of my sartorial possessions, I’m most proud of my coats. Or perhaps it’s that I’m most fond of them. Both. I was thinking about why this is, why coats, and not my shoes, bags, items that I group together because they’re longer investments of space and taste. Coats marry that somewhat elusive expression of self and functionality. I demand that of them because they’re required wear for at least four months out of the year. I want to enjoy it.

I came to New York with two coats: a dark gray Kenneth Cole wool-blend one that I bought under florescent lights at a department store in Lynchburg, Virginia, and a white fur coat I bought on eBay my senior year of college. I didn’t like the Kennth Cole coat; it was bought out of necessity. I was going to Paris to visit my best friend Caitlin and needed something warm. The fur coat I loved for the idea of it. The day the package arrived I wore it to my friend’s house, walking down the streets of New Orleans, then riding around in my friend’s red convertible, top down, feeling fabulous.

19-year-old me in Paris on NYE and 20-year-old me with my dear friend Robbie Dean in New Orleans. I think it's Halloween? Or maybe just a regular night. Hard to know.

The dark gray coat was for work, the fur for going out. Sometimes my boyfriend would let me borrow his army green parka with the fur trim. It swallowed me, but that’s why I liked it. I felt safe, protected from the cold and eyes around me under its decadent down weight.

“Just get a sleeping bag coat,” my friend Caroline told me over our packed lunches at the Time Inc. cafeteria, mine PB&J, hers roast chicken. We were discussing outerwear. I needed something warmer.

“Hm, maybe.”

I would not be getting a sleeping bag coat. That coat made me feel the same way as the gray one. I wanted something that was like the fur, but in a style I understood to be work appropriate. Scandal was big that year. Kerry Washington’s character wore this wrap coat with big lapels cocooning her neck. I found a similar style at Nordstrom Rack on 14th Street for a steal according to the price tag: ~$300, but originally ~$900. Camel-colored, 100% wool. I felt so expensive in it. I wore that coat and this army green parka with a faux fur-trim that I bought at Aritzia for around $275, a knock-off of my boyfriend’s. Paid for with a Discover credit card, my first two grown-up purchases. I wore those coats for years.

25-year-old me in Virginia with my family and at a football game with my brother Brian. I look so college!

They’re now gone. I sold the Kerry Washington coat and parka with the trim years ago, gave the fur to my sister Shelby, and I don’t remember what happened to the Kenneth Cole coat. What’s now displayed in my apartment are the coats I began collecting when I was 25 and started trusting my own taste. Nine years later, almost all of them hold up. The eight below are my favorites. The ones that make winter a step beyond bearable, not one puffy.