Maybe it’s the way they hug your body in all the right places. Or the discreetly placed pockets that always continue to surprise when your hands slip inside.
Or maybe it’s the way the belt ties around your waist–like the wrapping bow on a present–and how the ends sway along with your stride. Or perhaps its power lies in the smaller details, in the buttons and intricate stitching.
No matter the store, as soon as I walk in, my eyes scan the racks in search of a well-made coat (preferably in bright technicolor, but I’m not picky).
My coat craziness is so serious that I am well on my way to owning one in every color (This summer I picked up a yellow trench coat in Santa Barbara for $30!). It’s like I’m preparing for a deluge, which is ridiculous because I live in LA, where it rains two days a year if we’re lucky. According to my calendar, it’s the second day of fall, but LA tends to misbehave when it comes to following the seasons. Every morning from September to January I look out my window in search of wind or rain–I’ll even take some drizzle–but all to no avail because LA likes it hot, ALL THE TIME.
It’s hard to find someone who can understand the tragedy of our geographic location, but then I came across a story written by Monica Corcoran, a fashion writer at the LA Times–and I think we are soul mates.
Here is an excerpt:
SEPTEMBER IN L.A. is the cruelest month for a coat fiend like me. Temperatures laze in the 80s during the day, which makes buying a chic camel-hair swing coat about as daft as owning a beach towel in Anchorage. Nevermind the other East Coast sartorial staples — fitted turtle necks and ribbed tights — that taunt this N.Y. expat. Mostly, it’s the coat I crave. Ten years in L.A. hasn’t quelled my addiction to that jolt of static electricity that comes from friction with wool. Or the tickle of twill on my neck.
Every autumn, I still need that fix.
The rest of the article is just as good at describing what it feels to be a coat addict in LA. Interestingly enough, Corcoran’s childhood memory of her “heap red winter jacket from Sears filled with lumpy faux-down filling” got me thinking about the underlying reason for my addiction. As it turns out, I also had the same lumpy, red jacket that made me look like a ripe tomato wiggling its way through the school bus looking for a seat.
Who knew that miserable red jacket would make me susceptible to grow up to be a coat lover, who on more than one occasion, has considered performing a rain dance to correct the fact that she lives on the wrong coast.
