The Only Three Things That Matter in a Wool Coat

A wool coat is a strange purchase. It's worn more days a year than almost anything else in the wardrobe, it's usually the single most expensive item in it, and most people buy one in about fifteen minutes on the first genuinely cold Saturday of the year, under pressure, in a shop that's too warm to judge it properly.

Colour, brand and lapel style are what get discussed. They're the least important variables. Three things decide whether the coat still looks right in five winters, and none of them are on the label.

Shops will tell you a coat is warm. What you want to know is how much the cloth weighs, because that decides how the coat hangs, how it holds its shape, and whether it will still hold it after a season of being sat on. A proper overcoat cloth sits somewhere around 600 to 800 grams per metre. Anything much lighter is a coat-shaped garment that will start to look tired at the elbows by February.

You won't find the number on the tag. Hold the coat by the shoulders at arm's length: heavy cloth falls straight and swings back to still. Light cloth flutters and creases where it moves. That test, in the shop, tells you more than the price does.

Run your hand across the top of the shoulder from collar to sleeve. It should feel smooth and slightly firm, with the seam sitting exactly at the end of your own shoulder bone — not hanging past it and not pulled short of it. A shoulder that's an inch too wide reads as borrowed from a larger man; an inch too narrow and the sleeve pulls every time you reach for something.

This is the one thing a tailor can't cheaply fix. Length, sleeves and waist are all adjustable. The shoulder is the coat. Get that right and forgive almost everything else.

Length, sleeves and waist are all adjustable. The shoulder is the coat.

The mistake nearly everyone makes is trying the coat on over a shirt in a warm shop and buying the size that looks sharpest in the mirror. Then November arrives and it's worn over a jumper and a jacket, and suddenly the buttons pull and the sleeves ride up.

Try it on over the thickest thing you'll actually wear under it. If the shop doesn't have one, ask to try it over a coat off the rail. It should close without strain, and you should be able to cross your arms. A coat that only works over a shirt is a coat for the eleven days a year when you didn't need one.

Buy it when you can walk outside in it, or at least stand near the door. Judge the cloth by weight, the shoulder by feel, the size by what you'll wear underneath. Everything else — colour, single or double-breasted, the name inside — is taste, and taste is the easy part.