I had this overcoat made earlier in the year by Sartoria Ciardi from Naples, but have only had a chance to wear it consistently the past few months. The cloth is CT17 from Fox – a 20/21oz wool in their overcoatings bunch.
I was confident of the style, as it was the same as the taupe ‘British warm’ I had made with Ciardi a few years ago – the original review of that is here.
But I was a little unsure about the cloth. Not the weight or the quality necessarily, but the colour. The weight is light at 20oz, but it felt like it had enough heft. And the quality seemed pleasingly tweedy without actually being a tweed – and so could bridge smart and casual.
Perhaps I should use a word other than ‘quality’, actually. When people in the cloth trade refer to a ‘quality’ they mean a particular type of cloth – a yarn, weave, weight and finish, varying only then in colour or pattern. But of course that’s not how normal people use it, so perhaps I should call it the ‘type’ of cloth. Anyway, the type seemed nice and has proved to be so.
It was the that has proved tricky. My thinking was that I didn’t have a grey tailored overcoat, and if there was any whole to fill – in anyone’s wildest definitions of such a thing in my wardrobe – that was it. But I didn’t want a grey herringbone, like our Donegal or English Tweed coats.
This grey twill (the diagonal lines of the weave) looked nice. There was a little brown in the colour mix, the melange, which would add some warmth and make it less formal – good with black and cream jeans, perhaps even dark indigo, and great with all shades of brown.
This subtle design is the kind of thing Fox Brothers are particularly good at, by the way, and is an example of when I’m happy to pay their higher price. It often makes for cloth that’s both interesting and tasteful, and it’s not worth sacrificing that for a couple of hundred quid in saving.
When this coat was made up, however, the grey was a little lighter that I’d expected. It wasn’t hard to find a combination it looked good with – the tonal Scandi one here, all beige and brown, is typical for me and lovely – but it wasn’t that versatile.
With dark suits it stood out too much. With more rural colours like burgundy, forest green or a warmer brown, it was too smart and cold.
Interestingly, my Saman Amel coat (below) is a similar tone but I find it easier to wear, perhaps because it’s completely unstructured and more casual.
I also think the Ciardi is a little harder to wear because the colour makes its dandyish details stand out – the martingale back basically, with its half belt, box pleats and the buttoned vent. The Saman one is plainer.
This experience is the opposite of the Ciardi taupe coat (below). That turned out to be more versatile than I thought, as despite not being a classic navy, grey or charcoal, it worked with a wide range of outfits, including the tell-tale test of black and brown shoes.
The lesson there is probably that how light (in colour) a material is, is more important than whether it’s a slightly unusual colour, like taupe.
I also struggled with button choice on the light-grey coat. My instinct was to avoid contrast, so I initially chose a light-brown horn.
But these stood out too much, so next time Ciardi visited, I had them change them to dark brown. In retrospect this should have been obvious, given I knew how well dark brown worked on the Saman coat.
I guess the lesson is the similar to the one about overall colour – if in doubt go with darker buttons, even if it means higher contrast.
Let’s be clear – I still really like this coat. I wear it quite a lot and really enjoy doing so.
The material (the ‘quality’) is really nice – it is the perfect mix of smart and casual that I hoped. According to Fox, this is typical of west-of-England cloth – hard wearing but with slightly milled finish.
The colour just means that it isn’t something I’d recommend to readers as their first one or two coats. (There is of course a whole article here on making that choice.) It works for me, as I already have lots of more versatile options. But it might not for others so much.
The shoes, by the way, are vintage horsebit loafers (I’d guess from the early 90s). I’m still not sure of the horsebit style, but I picked these up for $40 at the excellent Alfargo’s Market Place in New York, and buying cheap second-hand is a nice way to experiment.
Trying horsebits is evidence of Lucas’s influence, and I do wear a lot of black loafers, particularly with a low vamp. So perhaps these will work out well – they just might be better with a relaxed warm-weather outfit than a wrapped-up winter one. We’ll see.
I don’t find I ever stop learning. I know I dress better than I used to – the trendline is definitely up, even if the data can look a little scattered. And anyway, life would be pretty boring if there were nothing left to learn.
Other clothes shown:
- White Permanent Style oxford button-down shirt
- Fawn Rubato V-neck lambswool sweater
- Brown flannel trousers, Fox cloth, from Whitcomb & Shaftesbury
- Californian model sunglasses, EB Meyrowitz
- Old Ralph Lauren cap
