Grab your coat. Or cape. Or jacket, poncho or capelet. The Most Reluctant Winter in recent fashion history is whistling through town.
(Main picture: Scanlan&Theodore wool/leather coat $900, (03) 9826 5742. www.scanlanandtheodore.com)
Your perfect shell is out there. Somewhere. On a rack, on the high street, or a fancy boutique. Somewhere, there is the perfect coat or cape or poncho for you. You will know it in an instant; it’s the one that spells D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-N-G-L-Y S-T-Y-L-I-S-H into the air around you. Your perfect outer layer – your best coat or cape – will be the revelation in your wardrobe. It will warm as it cocoons you, move just so as you walk, and team like a dream with your hair, your eyes and the tint of your skin.
Out of the wind, you will peel it off like an onion and hang it carefully, silky innards and smart woolly shell, ready for the next brrrr-bitter outing. (The thought of it makes you fizz.)
So, where is it?
An explosion of extraordinarily gorgeous coats and cape-like garments were delivered for winter 2013 and swung – so many, so sadly, so unloved – on a million racks for several warm, sticky months. Voxfrock has scoured most, and called in lookbooks of new stocks, either recently delivered or due for delivery for US/Euro fall/winter 13.
Among those most notable for nowness, were the neat, light, crisply tailored and rather fetching fingertip split capes or knee or calf-length coat styles, slim through the shoulders, either collarless or featuring shirt, or peter pan collar or puff of fur or garland of ruched velvet under the chin. (The bulked shoulderlines that dominated spring/summer 13/14 collections are more likely to show up, sculpted with heavier worsted and coated wools, next winter.) Buttons haven’t conceded to spring’s showy zips yet either, but simpler styles often had concealing plackets to cover them up and accentuate a clean, minimal surface with no visible fastenings.
Among the more lavish coats racked were Voxfrock’s favorite “Gatsby-esque” styles (including a corker from Scanlan & Theodore) fashioned with longer, above ankle or lower calf hemlines and more shapely, slightly heavier – but not too heavy – silhouettes. With more slump in the fabric there was a tendency to either belt, trench or bathrobe style, or exploit the glorious planes of soft wool textures with a chic tulip or tubular silhouette.
Voxfrock composed this small edit of our favorites; the loveliest, most contemporary and practical coats capes and ponchos, deliberately keyed to a range of sartorial tastes and climactic winter conditions, from peelable thin-as-skin options for our states to the north and west, to thick-as-saddle warmers for those, shivvering as we speak, in the east.
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Candice Burke, Emily Wilson, Janice Breen Burns, info@voxfrock.com.au
