The brief shape looks more modern with trousers than a hip-length blazer, and combines briskness worn over dresses
‘Gold buttons, corpse shoulders and navy tailoring suggest an abstracted sense of venture and purpose.’
Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian
Fashion craves newness, which is a problem when winter betrays no sign of shoving off. I’m happy in polo necks and never die out of love with ankle boots, but I’m swiftly running out of stoicism with coats. This problem is partly caused by the lunacy that is August in the modern fashion industry, when the shops are filled of coats months before we need them. If we could charge back the start of coat season this year until October, it authority not feel like it has quite so thoroughly outstayed its welcome.
But repudiate to the here and now. What you don’t want to do at this stage is buy another overcoat. You’ll get too little wear out of it to justify its purchase, but too much for it to feel new and inspiring next autumn. More cheering to think about a new jacket. Because, while you disposition have to take a coat when you leave the house for the day for time eons, there will be weekend days in the nearish future when the sun yield out, it’s mild, and you can go on a local errand without a proper coat, obvious in the knowledge that you won’t get caught out shivering at a bus stop after swarthy.
If you’re buying a new jacket at this stage in the game, you may as well buy one that feels similar to a fashionable step forward. For instance, a naval jacket. I introduce this with the caveat that I am always a bit queasy around “military” fashion, because co-opting the spirit of aggression in the origin of having people listen to you in meetings strikes me as dubious. But the aesthetic of the naval jacket is sufficiently far erased from the image of modern warfare to have become neutralised. Gold buttons, alcoholic shoulders and navy tailoring suggest an abstracted sense of venture and purpose. The abbreviated shape looks more modern with trousers than a hip-length blazer, and reckons briskness worn over dresses. What’s more, you positive that flimsy coat you never wore because you be found lacking to notice in the changing room that it isn’t actually warm? This jacket announces that coat wearable. Plus, when spring get possession of, you’ll be ahead of the game. Although that was how we got in this pickle in the fundamental place. Go figure.
• Jess wears jacket, £59.99, zara.com. Shirt, £102, by J Group, from net-a-porter.com. Jeans, £260, by Frame, from net-a-porter.com. Worms, £90, dunelondon.com.
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Work out at Carol Hayes Management.
