The Daily Gimme: Wool Double Face Coat

$998, Brooks Brothers

Yes! I am alive! To make up for a lack of Gimme yesterday, today's Gimme costs mucho dinero. I am a coat person, but I never like spending very much on one coat, even though I should. I think coats are excellent investments because their shapes/colors rarely change throughout the seasons and, if properly taken care of, they can last forever. Also, coats are pretty much your ONLY outfit during a large chunk of the winter months, and thus should be the first thing you spend money on. For me, coats are in the same category as handbags and shoes--you will have it forever, so you might as well splurge.

Having said all of this, none of my coats have surpassed $300. But I have a lot. I have black coats, white coats, red coats, blue coats, etc. etc. However, I am missing a camel coat. That's mostly because I think a heavy camel wool coat is the perfect coat for a nice business suit, and therefore one should really not cheap out on it. I like this one because it is a wool/cashmere blend, it has a very elegant and feminine silhouette, and the lack of any external buttons makes this coat timeless. (Buttons can be a big indicator of when a coat was made.) 

However, I wouldn't say that this coat is absolutely *perfect*. First of all, I'm not sure about the sash. I can never, ever make a sash look good. Just one knot makes it slip out all the time, and a double knot makes the coat difficult to remove. Am I supposed to tie it in a bow? Because there is rarely enough strap for that. I am also unsure about the length of the coat. I typically wear knee-length pencil skirts and dresses of the same length. I worry that this coat will be too short, revealing too much skirt. However, I am pretty short and the model is pretty tall, so the coat could actually come past my knees, which would reveal no skirt, making it look like I'm pantsless/naked under the coat. For more about matching hemlines of skirts with coats, see this WSJ article. (Also, while I was looking for a still-elusive infographic about skirts/coat hemlines, I stumbled across this treasure.)

Even though it is not perfect, it is still the best camel coat I've seen in my hours of online shopping, in an effort to avoid studying. The price tag is hefty, but, hey, dare to dream.