🚀 go-pugleaf

<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jNf7cff_62s/UoQd86SLD2I/AAAAAAAAMbQ/YF8tlCJKitU/s1600/Esq+Hurd+Black+homburg.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jNf7cff_62s/UoQd86SLD2I/AAAAAAAAMbQ/YF8tlCJKitU/s320/Esq+Hurd+Black+homburg.JPG" width="265" /></a></span></div><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A menswear writer's<em> métier</em>  is the justification of his own predilections, both in the sense that the creative act of writing mitigates, perhaps without totally excusing, the essentially unproductive personal passion for clothes horsemanship, and also in the sense that much of the writing itself is devoted to a search of the historical record and the practical sensibility for evidence in support of the collection of whims and affectations we call our personal style. The modern fascination with psychoanalysis has rendered the inexplicable preference obsolete. And so we dissect our taste buds in search of phlogiston ready to release itself upon contact with the coolest paraphernalia and desiderata. We eff the ineffable.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is in this excavatory spirit that I will attempt to explain why I prefer double-breasted overcoats. The first reason is practical. The overcoat's principal function is to keep you warm. Two overlapping layers of fabric on your chest are better than one for this purpose. Even people who wear single breasted overcoats must know this, because on cold days I see them walking down the street with one side of their coat pulled taut over the other, as if to create a second breast by force.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The second reason is aesthetic. Long, interrupted stretches of solid cloth are boring. Coats should be long (at least to the knee) for the same already-mentioned uncool reason that they should be double-breasted. A single-breasted coat leaves swaths of fabric unadorned. If it's cut with a dramatic silhouette, or a lengthy, seductive peak lapel, it can still capture the imagination. But most overcoats are not cut this way, and are instead straight and boxy, or even oversized. The single-breasted varities end up looking like Snuggies with buttons. Double-breasted overcoats are more dynamic. Lapel lines are longer since they're generally either peak or the still more rambunctious Ulster collar. The double rows of buttons and the overlap of the two sides of the coat provide width that balances the length of the coat. The double-breasted overcoat is both more harmonious and more exciting than the single-breasted.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, as no iGent polemic is ever complete without references to <i>Apparel Arts </i>illustrations, 19<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup>century dandyism, and the Duke of Windsor, I first appeal to the one issue of <i>Apparel Arts</i> that I own, which happens to be a Fall preview for 1936. I can report that most of the overcoats depicted are double-breasted. The 30s have voted, and double-breasted overcoats have won. I can also quote no less an authority than Farid Chenoune on the nautical-cum-dandiacal origin of the overcoat:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Around 1835 there emerged a fashion that provoked wariness among tailors – the overcoat....Double-breasted, back-vented, firmly buttoned and endowed with large pockets, it had nearly all the features of the sailor's coat that, according to legend, the comte d'Orsay borrowed one rainy day.”</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At least according to Chenoune, the first overcoats (and, by the rules of menswear, therefore the best overcoats) were double-breasted. Having name-dropped a Count, let me move up to a Prince, failed King, or Duke, whichever you think ranks highest. Although there are many photos of the Duke of Windsor wearing beautiful double-breasted overcoats, the most famous of which was his </span><a href="http://www.assetstorage.co.uk/AssetStorageService.svc/GetImageFriendly/721257780/700/700/0/0/1/80/ResizeBestFit/0/PressAssociation/14A40BED9DE2EC3095F35A03EB6D847E/royalty-duke-and-duchess-of-windsor-southampton-dock.jpg"><span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;">polo coat</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, in the only </span><a href="http://www.e-reading.biz/illustrations/1007/1007828-_40.jpg"><span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;">photo</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I have seen of him wearing a single-breasted overcoat, he looks like a blind person. Maybe we can just assume someone gave him that coat to wear as a practical joke and told him it was double-breasted, which a half-century later inspired the gift of a dead parrot to a blind 8-year-old in the comedy classic Dumb and Dumber.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In keeping with <em>A Suitable Wardrobe</em> tradition, I will trust that even if my explications haven't convinced you, a simple restatement of my thesis will be enough to demonstrate that I have convinced myself.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Overcoats should be double-breasted.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: right;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Words by David Isle and illustration from <em>Esquire</em></span></o:p></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><div class="feedflare">
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