One coat. All winter.
Undyed Donegal wool, cut long, belted, and built to be the only thing on the hook by the door from November to March.
Cut 41 · woven in the north · rain expected
Outerwear · one model · 300 coats a year
Undyed Donegal wool, cut long, belted, and built to be the only thing on the hook by the door from November to March.
Cut 41 · woven in the north · rain expectedA wardrobe of six jackets is six compromises. One good coat is a decision you make once and stop thinking about for a decade.
Woven in a mill that has made this cloth since 1892. Heavy enough to hang straight in wind, dense enough that rain sits on top for twenty minutes before it thinks about coming in.
The only modern thing in the coat. It stops the wind the wool can't and lets the sweat out that wool always could. You will never see it, which is the point.
Cut generously so the coat goes on over a jacket without a fight, and stitched so a tailor anywhere can replace it in an afternoon when it finally wears through in 2038.
The same coat, every day, getting better at its job.
Straight off the hanger, stiff as a board and slightly too formal. Wear it in the rain immediately.
The collar has learned your neck. The belt knot is muscle memory. This is the month people ask where you got it.
Elbows going soft, hem holding straight. Brush it, hang it, forget it until November.
Relined once, reproofed twice, still the only thing on the hook. The cost per wear stopped being interesting years ago.
Wool was rain gear
for four thousand years
before anyone invented nylon.
Wool wants air, not dry cleaning. Twice a winter, a stiff brush and a night on a wide hanger does everything a chemical bath would, minus the damage. When something does go, it comes back to us.