But which three?
Mr Waugh models one of his choices
Esquire agree with Waugh's characters, asserting that a man needs "a parka, an everyday one and a formal coat." Alas, while I can agree with their 'ball-park figure,' I cannot agree with their candidates. Even allowing for the fact that this is a US publication, I can envisage no circumstances in which it would be appropriate for a gentleman to wear 'a parka', even if pretending for the purposes of fancy dress to be a member of a nineties guitar-based pub rock band, or attending a seaside rumble on a May bank holiday in Great Yarmouth. Perhaps if one were working undercover in a wood-smuggling gang in the Russian Far East - this is not a suitable pastime for a gentlemen, of course - but even then I would have thought a durable woollen cloth with an astrakhan or fur collar, worn with a cashmere/silk pullover and scarf, would be more appropriate.
Rather, I would assert that the three overcoats a man needs are: a town coat, a country coat and a weatherproof coat.
Town coats
The best sort of town coat is the type now typically described as a 'Crombie', but more accurately described as a Chesterfield. To whit, a plain dark blue or dark grey single-breasted overcoat, with a notched lapel, and a clean, tailored fit. Typically a Chesterfield/Crombie will have a welted outbreast pocket; two jetted and flapped skirt pockets, and possibly a ticket pocket; and a three-button front with fly fastening (that is, the buttons are concealed).
Chesterfields typically have four cuff buttons, but, as these are entirely decorative, I'd be inclined either to leave them off entirely or to have a turn-back cuff. As with suits, the darker the blue (or grey) the better: lighter shades make you look like the proverbial provincial car salesman or Armenian pimp.
To avoid the Widmerpool error, the skirt should finish above but close to the knee. If you prefer a still-shorter overcoat, the only stipulation is that it must fully cover both the seat of the trousers and the coat of any suit worn beneath it.
Double-breasted overcoats in dark blue or dark grey are also acceptable, but, unless they are well-tailored and a properly dark blue, will give you something of the air of a New Labour MP on his way to the IoD for lunch with a potential campaign donor.
The coat might have a velvet collar, in which case it would be better to match the cloth closely rather than use a contrasting colour. However, this is a tricky one: the velvet collar has the slightly pretentious air of the redundant leather elbow patches seen occasionally on ready-to-wear tweed coats. And, contrary to the claims of some sources, the velvet collar is almost certainly not descended from a C19th gesture of sympathy to the French aristocracy, but from the refurbishing of a worn collar. The use of velvet to obviates the need to find a swatch of the original cloth that has suffered the same wear and tear and therefore matches the rest of the coat.
'Pea coats,' associated with US Navy sailors on shore-leave cruising for ladyboys, are now popular, but, being shorter than the town coat, look frankly a bit effortfully youthful. And naval-inspired fashions - serge bell-bottom trousers, blazer, unprotected anal sex - are never going to be enduring style options.
Naval fashions: popular with the lady(boy)s
I once read - in Esquire or a lookee-likee with delusions of sophistication, such as FHM - a suggestion that you dress up your town coat with a pocket square, perhaps holding it in place with a discrete tie pin. Well, yes - you could. You are, after all, a human, possessed of a degree of free will. But you probably shouldn't - unless you want to look like (a) the sort of person who reads and takes seriously what he is told in the 'style press,' (b) an association footballer, or (c) a twat. Or all three. (There is a fair bit of overlap, I believe.)
Country coats
A country coat is much harder to define, and frankly is probably not that big a deal if you don't spend much time outside the Metropolis. There is considerable leeway in both pattern and cloth - indeed it need not be a formal coat at all. It could be tweed, flannel or worsted; a herringbone, a houndstooth, a window-pane check et cetera. Mr Waugh, in the above picture, demonstrates a particularly singular type.
Rus in urbe: two birds with one stone
Broadly similar to a Chesterfield - single-breated, fly-fronted, three-quater length - the covert coat could provide you with an excellent option for both a town and country coat. The covert, which flowers in great profusion in the thoroughfares of St James's and the alleys of The City from around the middle of November, has its origins in field sports - as did the tail coat, and indeed most items of gentlemen's tailoring - and has since crept from the stables to the town. It is characterised by the covert cloth - a khaki wool with flecks of paler twists in the weave - and the peculiar four rows of parallel stitching at the hem and each cuff. Some versions use the heavier keeper's tweed, which is a sort of lovat grey-green; but that is probably too heavy to wear with a suit.
The advantage of using a covert coat to kill both birds - apart from thrift - is that it gives you one coat's credit, and in that case I'd opt either for an Inverness cape or for an Ulster, in a good, hard grey or dark green herringbone tweed, possibly with a very muted check.
The British Warm
Another slightly rakish, though somewhat trickier, option is the British Warm, a thick woollen overcoat originally made for wear by British officers serving in temperate climates around the turn of the twentieth century, similar to the standard issue greatcoat, but made of finer cloth and slightly shorter. The warm is made from a pale grey-brown cloth (used until very recently for the cloth of officers' Tam O'Shanters), is double-breasted, fastening with leather buttons, and has eppaulettes.
Alanbrooke (centre) wearing the British Warm.
Montgomery shows him the route to the Reeperbahn
Given Britain's reluctant experience of industrial warfare in the last hundred years, with millions of men under arms, and the consequent increase among the ranks of commissioned officers of men to whom such a position was accessible only because of the pressures of wartime, the British warm does smack slightly of the demob rig of a provincial solicitor, a Labour member for a mining village during the second Churchill government or a Clough-era soccer manager. Best avoided for non-military types, and, to buy the genuine item, ruinously expensive.
Weatherproof coats
You know the stuff: Barbour or Belstaff if you want modern, unstructured and 'practical', Mackintosh or Cording's if you want something smarter. Burberry if you want the slightly predictable nouveau look. Stick to plain, dark colours. Give North Face, Blacks and Millets a very wide berth unless you want to look like Sir Ranulph Feinnes while trekking along Chiswick High Street.
It is often asserted by the dogmatic and prejudiced - as opposed to philosophical - that the only colour for a raincoat is a sort of stone or light fawn, and that no gentleman wears a blue raincoat. As with most so-called 'rules' - shirt pockets, suede shoes, 'brown in town' - I have no fixed opinions on the matter. Certainly the classic Burberry raincoat - before the brand owners lurched down several socio-demographic groups and started selling dog-coats and bikinis - was a rural-looking light khaki. However, Bond wears a dark blue Burberry, so you can find literary justification for your choice if anyone is uncouth enough to challenge you.
You could go rogue and buy something like one of Zegna's technological fabrics, or one of those Fay coats with a detachable lining. Certainly they are very smart, and probably quite warm as well. But damn it all, man: you're English. Wind and rain are as natural to you as military dictatorships and early afternoon naps are to the Mediterranean. Just wear a pullover under your oilskins and get on with it.
Protected against the extreme climatic conditions of Holland Park
Warning
Now, like 'Jerry's final thought,' for the obligatory Bumwad word of warning. (Perhaps we could call it 'the Bumword.')
If you aren't going to have a town coat made - good London tailors' bespoke prices start at around £1,200, made-to-measure around £700 - you can of course buy ready-to-wear coats from various gentlemen's outfitters. The 'zone of value' here demands that you spend around £500, although good versions, like Bladen's, can be had for £400. Do not expect to pick up a bargain at end-of-year sales: properly-made Chesterfield and covert coats are perenially popular items, and are highly unlikely to be discounted, unless the retailer is changing supplier, is planning a subtle refinement to the design, or has a serious glut after a warm AW season.
I am quite certain that Ede and Ravenscroft produce their ready-made stuff at the same place and to the same high standards as their 'made-to-measure' stuff, at a factory in northern England. Bladen do a good version as well, which I am pretty sure is English-made; but they don't have their own premises and sell through other 'country clothing' shops. Hackett used to do a good version - about a decade ago. They then decided to fuck it up by adding what they no doubt called a 'contemporary twist,' putting four buttons on the front, and having unjetted pockets. Phil Spencer, of the never-popular television programme Location, location, location used to sport one such garment. That it was worn by a man who is both a television 'star' and an estate agent says it all.
The traditional place to buy coverts is Cording's on Piccadilly, who claim to have invented the coat. However, I have a suspicion that their stuff is no longer made in the UK, and I have heard someone say their coverts are made in Romania.
Further down the food chain, the garments you will see from September onwards in the windows of some Jermyn Street menswear retailers like Charles Fuckwit and T M Lewin will approximate to covert coats, but, as with all these superficial bargains, the cloth, buttons and finishing will be inferior. If you pay the 'sale' price you might get a degree of value for money, but remember you are buying a £200 coat, manifestly NOT a £500 coat 'reduced' to £200.
Thanks to the popularity of Lock, stock and two smoking barrels, in which the long, tailored coats displayed an emotional range entirely absent among the cast of deeply unconvincing wannabe hard-men, second-rate footballers and Press gang refugees, numerous retailers started selling three-quarter-length, fly-fronted coats masquerading as Chesterfields or covert coats. Even Top Shop produced imitations for several seasons around the turn of the 21st century. Such faux coverts continue to adhere to the High Street, but, although the Fuckwit/Lewin/Hackett versions are not quite the thing, these are to the proper overcoat as excrement is to Oddono's ice cream.
T M Lewin? Leave it aht, you mug, you muppet, you slaaaaag...
P.s. I'm not a trained retail analyst - obviously - but it seems to me that places like Lewin and Fuckwit are sailing very close to the wind when they advertise 'sales'. It might be an urban myth, but I believe some retailers have a single Theresienstadt-type shop, usually in a location where rents are impossibly low but footfall is minimal, in which they maintain stock priced at the higher alleged 'recommended retail price', so they can legally describe the stock elsewhere as 'on sale'.
Be that as it might, if you ever find yourself in a Lewin premises that does not have some kind of '4 shirts for £20' or 'two suits for £1.50' offer, you're a fool not to wait a few minutes until it does.
(Of course, I think you're a fool to buy your clothes there, full stop; but Britain is in many ways still a free country, so you are at liberty to ignore my opinion.)
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