Men's Long Wool Blend Navy Blue Overcoat

Not a single button shows on the front. They sit behind a flap so the whole thing closes as an unbroken line of cloth from the collar to the hem. It is the reason the coat looks like it cost several times what I paid, and I had not appreciated how much visible buttons date a coat.

The split at the back makes a bigger difference on a coat this long than I would have guessed. You can take proper stairs two at a time without the hem pulling across your legs, and getting in and out of a car is a normal action rather than a manoeuvre. My last long coat had no vent and I gave up on it.

Carried it over one arm through a long wait at a station and it did not come out looking mangled at all. Folds along the shoulder seam and stays folded rather than sliding about. Back on and it looked like it had been hanging up.

Took my normal size and it is right over a suit jacket with a little room and right over a jumper without being loose. That balance is hard to hit and the chart on the page was accurate rather than optimistic. Nothing to alter and nothing to send back, which is a first for me latley.

Two people have asked me which brand it is and one of them named a house that charges about twelve times what I paid. I did not correct him at any length. I think it is the hidden closure doing the work, because the eye has nothing to catch on and the shape is the only thing to look at. There is nothing about it that gives away where it came from.

Comes down to just below the knee on me at five foot eleven, which is proper overcoat length rather than the slightly apologetic version most places sell now. It covers a suit jacket with room to spare and it covers the back of your legs when the wind is behind you. Anything shorter and you are wearing a long jacket rather than a coat, and the whole point of buying one of these is the length.

I speak at events several times a year and I arrive in this now. It travels well, it goes over whatever I am wearing underneath, and it comes off without disturbing anything. There is also something about a plain front that photographs cleanly, which matters when somebody is taking pictures at the door and you have no control over which one they use. It has quietly become part of how I turn up to those things.