October 31, 2007 12:51 AM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

I agree with you...a coat is very important. The thing is, you're going to be wearing it year after year; coats tend to not be trendy.

I collect coats more slavishly than clothes actually. Coats are virtually forever; a good one will last you the rest of your life.

October 31, 2007 1:43 PM,  Dain said...

Well, by "slavish" I mean above a dozen. Who needs 15 coats, even 10?

I think the best way to defy a trend is not to go for something faceless but very, very individualistic. The kind of thing that other people recognize as "your coat". If it's your signature, it cannot, no matter what it is, go out of style.

November 1, 2007 1:04 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

I agree with that. I do think a coat should be recognizable somehow as yours, rather than a sort of generic item.

I actually see nothing wrong with owning ten coats. If it gets to the Imelda point, where you have tons of something for the sake of having tons of something, well, I'm not sure I see the point in that.

The weather here...and in Washington, but especially here...is wildly changeable, even throughout the day, or from place to place. When I lived in the City, you could take a bus from one part of town where you'd need an actual coat, to, say, the Mission, where it would suddenly be sweating hot. You find yourself wearing jackets more than you would on the East Coast, or at least that's my recollection. There it's either hot and it stays hot, or else it's cold and you wear your coat and take it off whenever you get where you're going to.

But here, you don't always need a real winter coat...I have some, and have used them, you do need to own at least one, contrary to how people think of the weather in California. More often you find yourself wearing jackets of varying weights and levels of water resistance. I've got everything from down to the kind of thing I wore in Washington (water resistant, longer length, hooded) to leather...there is something of a cult of the jacket here, but it's based on the climate.

November 1, 2007 3:03 PM,  Dain said...

Well, I think it's important for women in this hyperconsumerist day and age to consider what they need and weigh it against what they want. But I do think that should be a personal decision. I myself am using this series as a sort of closet minimalism, so with my mother's trenchcoat from the 70s, my plaid wool coat, and some sorta down thing for when it's 10 below, I think that's enough.

November 1, 2007 6:49 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

You're right about the hyperconsumerism...it becomes buying for the sake of buying. Or buying cos you don't have anything better to do. We've become a nation of importers and retailers. The whole buy-buy-buy thing...not a good way to sustain an economy.

Plus the quality of what's in the shops has declined to the point that things fall apart...meaning, more buying.

It only now occurred to me how odd the weather is out here; I've become used to it. In some ways it's temperate, we don't get deep freezes...a couple of times of year it does freeze, but lightly. In the summer it's dry so you're not bathing in humidity and high heat.

But day to day, the weather here can be as hard to live in as the weather in "four seasons" places, if only because you can't really adjust to it.