Some of the trendiest names in design have been embracing the straight-up-and down, button less coats so loved by the royals. There’s nothing like a royal wedding and 38 pages in Hello! to focus the mind on the key issue of the hour: what does one wear to a smart daytime rendezvous these days?
I might accidentally have stumbled on the answer. I say accidentally because fashion, as you may have noticed, is wrapped up in themes at the moment. If it’s not cyber warriors, it’s rural Bohemians or ethnic hippies. But Jean de Florette and 2001, A Space Odyssey notwithstanding, the summer coat has emerged as the year’s indispensable hit. (By coat I don’t mean spring raincoats, although they’re always useful, but something whose function is less circumscribed and more adaptable.)
The royals have worn summer coats come hell or high fashion. While the rest of us were camouflaging big hips with even bigger shoulder- padded power jackets, wafting around in pashminas or skipping down the Paula Yates/Denise van Outen path to perdition in too-tight cardigans, the Windsor matriarchs stood by their colourful summer coat and matching frock combos with the solemn sense of duty that we have come to expect of them.
They may be having the last laugh now, not least because the increasingly influential house of Marni, to name but one, has embraced the straight-up-and-down, buttonless royal summer coat, give or take a few tweaks, as only an Italian label can. Meanwhile, the high street has fallen over itself to provide its own interpretations, from the functional ER latex look to the embellished brocade of an Indian maharani.
With all respect to their majesties, their customary endorsement of the summer coat might not be its biggest selling point – especially as the Queen dispensed with it on Saturday. The real catalysts for its revival are probably Helmut Lang and Miuccia Prada. Last year each produced an ivory felt “lab” coat that became ubiquitous among sleek, glossy New York fashion editors, who found the lightness and whiteness – which initially made it look something of an indulgence – the very qualities that made it so practical. So much so that even now they are snapping up different styles faster than you can say fashion moment.
If ever there was a golden time for the summer coat to shake off its school-uniform stigma, this is it, and shake it off it has. At the Versace-De Beers ball at Syon House recently, evening versions of the summer coat, in gently tailored slub silks or billowing satins, gave pashminas a run for their money. For one thing they provide a touch of welcome structure over this year’s soft, fluid dresses – and unlike the five pashminas still languishing in the lost property pile from that evening, they are less likely to get left on the back of a chair.
If you want more than one, consider an inexpensive, lightweight, preferably waterproof one for day, in any colour other than the traditional beige. It will be invaluable against the vagaries of a British summer. And when it is slipped over trousers or a skirt for important meetings, it’s a more up-to-date solution than a jacket.
For special occasions invest as much as you can: co-ordinated but not matched with a good basic shift dress and great pair of shoes, a slightly fitted single-breasted coat will get you through all the weddings, cocktail parties and other smart events that you’re likely to attend this summer.
Oddly, the more you pay for some summer coats, the more compatible they are with day as well as night-time. Many are unlined and designed to be worn inside as well as out. Paul Smith’s sky blue and deep pink flower-print coat works just as well over jeans or capri pants as it does over a plain cocktail dress – and it comes with matching mules. J&M Davidson’s white lab coat has co-ordinating pedal-pushers for a cute but smart alternative suit look. Suzanne Clements and Inacio Ribeiro have produced a good choice of dramatic- looking, tall, funnel-necked, abstract or zigzag cotton coats that can be dressed up or down. Better still, the coat you buy now will work through the winter as an evening accessory.
The most successful of the high street dressy versions comes from Press & Bastyan. Three of its indigo embroidered translucent frock coats turned up in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot last week.
When Jackie Kennedy made the cloth coat part of her fashion vocabulary, it – along with her shift dresses, bouffant hairdo and pillbox hats – made her the most copied woman in the world. The first cloth coat she wore publicly in her role as First Lady was actually a winter one, designed by Oleg Cassini, in beige wool, with a small fur collar and muff.”Within a matter of hours, it seemed,” wrote Cassini, “copies of my coat had sprouted on every rack.”
But the real appeal of the summer coat is its versatility – and not just at dressy gatherings. Hell, it would even come in handy at Glastonbury.
