 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
How to dress like a gentleman- A guide on the history of the Overcoat:how to dress like a true gentleman
OVERCOATS
HISTORY
The overcoat, commonly referred to as simply the coat, can be traced back to the 17th century.
Prior to that, outer protective garments consisted of untailored mantels, such as cloaks or capes.
Ancient Britons made do with a piece of cloth which doubled as a mantle by day and a blanket at
night. The fabric with which it was made has come down to us in the form of Scottish and Irish plaids.
The Roman toga was as much as 5.5 metres long and more than 2.1 metres wide and must have
required assistance to drape in the stately manner prescribed. This was too much for most people,
and by later Roman times they were wearing outer garments in use to this day in the form of such
sacred Christain vestments as the chausible, which as the casual was an everyday mantle, or
poncho, dropping easily over the shoulders, with and opening for the head to pop through.
Cloaks with sleeves did not appear until 16th century, initially for riding. The buff (from ‘buffalo’)
coat of leather was a military overgarment widely popular in the 17th century, while a long , loose
outer garment with cuffed sleeves and open side seams for the sword to hang through was very
fashionable by the 1660s.
When, in the 18th century, the riding coat became adapted for genteel indoor wear, a similar but
much bulkier ‘greatcoat’, or surtout, was introduced, with full skirts and centre-vent , the latter being
required to accommodate the back of a horse. By the 1790s, the greatcoat had acquired deep
overlapping collars. As the Carrick, it reached almost to the ground and became familiar throughout
Europe as the wear of coachmen.
The early decades of the 19th century saw great-coats become so modish that they were being
worn whatever the weather. In 1830, the author of a book on sartorial style declared that no
‘fashionable’ man would be seen without his black, blue or olive ‘surtout-coat’, with pinched waist,
full skirt, and puffed-up, velvet-lapelled chest.
The surtout gave way to the Paletot, and abbreviated greatcoat, but soon a term covering
overcoats in general. Styles proliferated in confused abundance, most soon to be forgotten, but a
few destined to become classics.
The Chesterfield appeared first as a development of the frock coat, evolving gradually over the
century into the classic formal overcoat. The Inverness Cape, a wide-sleeved tweed overcoat with
shoulder - cape, was a favourite of Victorian travelers. The Ulster was a heavy tweed overcoat, full
and belted, with a detachable hood, introduced by a Belfast firm in the 1860s. Thirty years later, the
Tailor and Cutter advised that “no gentleman’s wardrobe is complete without and Ulster”.
The trade journal was for technical reasons less enthusiastic about the distinctive, slope –
shouldered Raglan, finding it “somewhat difficult to cut”, but that did limit the popularity of this light
and adaptable style dating from the time of the Crimean War. By the 1890s, there were Raglans
made of fabric which had been water-proofed.
The smell of soggy woolen greatcoats is alone sufficient to explain why effective waterproofing so
exercised 19th-century minds. Cloth treated with oil-oilskin-was a kind of solution and enthusiasts
took to boiling clothing for hours in oily concoctions of their own invention in attempts to make it
impermeable. In 1823, the Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh patented his method of bonding
rubber between layers of cloth, and within a few years waterproof cloak and cape ‘macintoshes’
were being produced, but they were stiff, smelly and potentially unhealthy.
Enter Thomas Burberry, a country draper who recognized that the solution demanded a material
which allowed free passage of air even while excluding water. After much experiment, hi hit upon a
method of chemically treating cotton fabric so that it repelled water while remaining porous.
Burberry moved to London in 1891 and became world famous, first for his ingenious all-conditions
sports-wear, proclaimed in an advertisement of 1904 to be “PROOF against the Heaviest Rains and
Mists, the Stoutest Thorn of Fishhook’, and then for his rain-coat”.
The overcoat, a military innovation at the ouset, was hugely influential in, and influenced by, the
great wars of the 20th century. The singular demands of trench warfare were answered by the
British Warm, a short, comfortable double-breasted officer’s coat that replaced a standard-issue
great-coat. It was joined by the rain-resistant cotton gabardine trenchcoat, designed by Burberry’s
uniform department and issued to more than half a million men in the course of the war.
Both these coats went on to post-war glory; the British Warm in slightly adapted form, the
trenchcoat with all of its militaristic panache and paraphernalia intact, The hooded, durable Duffle
coat, at first a Royal Navy garment dubbed the convoy coat, became the signature-wear of Field-
Marshall Montgomery in the Second World War and without quite achieving the enduring impact of
those other war-coats it proved immensely popular when launched commercially in the early 1950s.
The motor car and other phenomena of 20th-century living had a influence on outerwear of all
kinds. Early needs of the open roadster dictated that the ‘motoring coat’ be brutishly big and belted
and usually of leather because, as the Tailor and Cutter put it, “when traveling at a high rate of
speed, the ordinary cloth is not sufficient protection for the chest”. With the enclosed and ever more
comfortable ‘saloon’ car came a drastically different set of requirements, for a coat that was easy to
put on and off, and slight enough not to hamper driving.
With ceaseless advances in man-made fibres coupling with new ideas in abbreviated car coats,
anoraks and windcheaters, style was often to suffer in the scramble for clever novelty.
HISTORY
The overcoat, commonly referred to as simply the coat, can be traced back to the 17th century.
Prior to that, outer protective garments consisted of untailored mantels, such as cloaks or capes.
Ancient Britons made do with a piece of cloth which doubled as a mantle by day and a blanket at
night. The fabric with which it was made has come down to us in the form of Scottish and Irish plaids.
The Roman toga was as much as 5.5 metres long and more than 2.1 metres wide and must have
required assistance to drape in the stately manner prescribed. This was too much for most people,
and by later Roman times they were wearing outer garments in use to this day in the form of such
sacred Christain vestments as the chausible, which as the casual was an everyday mantle, or
poncho, dropping easily over the shoulders, with and opening for the head to pop through.
Cloaks with sleeves did not appear until 16th century, initially for riding. The buff (from ‘buffalo’)
coat of leather was a military overgarment widely popular in the 17th century, while a long , loose
outer garment with cuffed sleeves and open side seams for the sword to hang through was very
fashionable by the 1660s.
When, in the 18th century, the riding coat became adapted for genteel indoor wear, a similar but
much bulkier ‘greatcoat’, or surtout, was introduced, with full skirts and centre-vent , the latter being
required to accommodate the back of a horse. By the 1790s, the greatcoat had acquired deep
overlapping collars. As the Carrick, it reached almost to the ground and became familiar throughout
Europe as the wear of coachmen.
The early decades of the 19th century saw great-coats become so modish that they were being
worn whatever the weather. In 1830, the author of a book on sartorial style declared that no
‘fashionable’ man would be seen without his black, blue or olive ‘surtout-coat’, with pinched waist,
full skirt, and puffed-up, velvet-lapelled chest.
The surtout gave way to the Paletot, and abbreviated greatcoat, but soon a term covering
overcoats in general. Styles proliferated in confused abundance, most soon to be forgotten, but a
few destined to become classics.
The Chesterfield appeared first as a development of the frock coat, evolving gradually over the
century into the classic formal overcoat. The Inverness Cape, a wide-sleeved tweed overcoat with
shoulder - cape, was a favourite of Victorian travelers. The Ulster was a heavy tweed overcoat, full
and belted, with a detachable hood, introduced by a Belfast firm in the 1860s. Thirty years later, the
Tailor and Cutter advised that “no gentleman’s wardrobe is complete without and Ulster”.
The trade journal was for technical reasons less enthusiastic about the distinctive, slope –
shouldered Raglan, finding it “somewhat difficult to cut”, but that did limit the popularity of this light
and adaptable style dating from the time of the Crimean War. By the 1890s, there were Raglans
made of fabric which had been water-proofed.
The smell of soggy woolen greatcoats is alone sufficient to explain why effective waterproofing so
exercised 19th-century minds. Cloth treated with oil-oilskin-was a kind of solution and enthusiasts
took to boiling clothing for hours in oily concoctions of their own invention in attempts to make it
impermeable. In 1823, the Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh patented his method of bonding
rubber between layers of cloth, and within a few years waterproof cloak and cape ‘macintoshes’
were being produced, but they were stiff, smelly and potentially unhealthy.
Enter Thomas Burberry, a country draper who recognized that the solution demanded a material
which allowed free passage of air even while excluding water. After much experiment, hi hit upon a
method of chemically treating cotton fabric so that it repelled water while remaining porous.
Burberry moved to London in 1891 and became world famous, first for his ingenious all-conditions
sports-wear, proclaimed in an advertisement of 1904 to be “PROOF against the Heaviest Rains and
Mists, the Stoutest Thorn of Fishhook’, and then for his rain-coat”.
The overcoat, a military innovation at the ouset, was hugely influential in, and influenced by, the
great wars of the 20th century. The singular demands of trench warfare were answered by the
British Warm, a short, comfortable double-breasted officer’s coat that replaced a standard-issue
great-coat. It was joined by the rain-resistant cotton gabardine trenchcoat, designed by Burberry’s
uniform department and issued to more than half a million men in the course of the war.
Both these coats went on to post-war glory; the British Warm in slightly adapted form, the
trenchcoat with all of its militaristic panache and paraphernalia intact, The hooded, durable Duffle
coat, at first a Royal Navy garment dubbed the convoy coat, became the signature-wear of Field-
Marshall Montgomery in the Second World War and without quite achieving the enduring impact of
those other war-coats it proved immensely popular when launched commercially in the early 1950s.
The motor car and other phenomena of 20th-century living had a influence on outerwear of all
kinds. Early needs of the open roadster dictated that the ‘motoring coat’ be brutishly big and belted
and usually of leather because, as the Tailor and Cutter put it, “when traveling at a high rate of
speed, the ordinary cloth is not sufficient protection for the chest”. With the enclosed and ever more
comfortable ‘saloon’ car came a drastically different set of requirements, for a coat that was easy to
put on and off, and slight enough not to hamper driving.
With ceaseless advances in man-made fibres coupling with new ideas in abbreviated car coats,
anoraks and windcheaters, style was often to suffer in the scramble for clever novelty.
 |
| |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| If you have any reservations don't hesitate to contact us via email or telephone. © 2001-2008 Don's Footwear Online. All rights reserved. Elevator shoes can increase your height Return Policy Security Contact Us Elevator shoes |