The Brown Wool Coat

How to begin this article? Like most self-respecting (read despairing) millennials I reached for Google and typed ‘shades of brown’. It was like looking at the colour swatches used for all US insurance office furniture or reading through some sort of special menu item from Starbucks: mocha, pecan, gingerbread, syrup, cinnamon.

This exercise and the lacklustre colour palette it generated got me thinking conversely about the associations of luxury we attach to the brown wool overcoat. What about it’s timeless allure? Take the rich, dusty hue of the camel coat, a wardrobe essential that has been making men and women look both elegant and sartorial for over six decades - what of its history and many wearers over the years?

The camel coat notably enjoyed popularity during the first two world wars as silk, leather and wool were in short supply and were needed elsewhere as part of the war effort but camel hair remained very much available. Bactrian camels would stand, unfazed by the daytime 40 °C heat and settle, backs low and stooped, once the temperatures plummeted during the nights, making their wool priceless for the purposes of a reliable and functional coat during wartime.

So how did an item with such utilitarian roots come to represent the height of luxury? Quite simply the company it kept in the early years of Hollywood insured its enduring legacy. Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve and Marilyn Monroe were all pictured wearing oversized and belted versions of the coat both on and off set. Ali Macgraw’s camel coat in Love Story (1970) was the reason so many of the film’s scenes were perfect.

Over the years luxury brands such as Max Mara and Celine have become synonymous with the fashion stalwart but the high-street always has impressive offerings from season to season - Arket, H&M and Zara do it especially well.

With this look I wanted to pair the clothing soulmates - indigo denim and brown wool. I used a very simple colour palette to create a real off-duty and refined look and used this vivid tortoiseshell clutch to create some tonal harmony and make everything pop a little more. The boots are a new love which I’ve taken out and shown a good time and I think they do well to draw out the slightly more retro, 70s associations that the camel coat evokes.

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