Uncovering the latest trends in coat fashion

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Anyone who has ever seen the way I dress would know that the world of fashion is complete anathema to me – but every so often some trend comes along that can still knock you right off your feet.

The latest phenomenon is apparently the new way to wear your coat, which can be best described as the way that schoolboys insist on having the garment hanging off both shoulders.

As like every craze in the world of fashion, it turns out that some people have inadvertently been trend-setters for years.

You only have to see little fellas on their way to school to know this – the coats are hanging off them, held in place halfway down their backs by the weight of a school bag carrying two stone of books.

How many times have you seen mammies putting into practice the advice we were all given at least once in our lives – to pull ourselves together?

This involves dragging the coat into a more orthodox position – as in, on the shoulders, closed at the front and with the hands clearly visible at the end of the sleeves.

But now it turns out the kids were right all along – the coolest way to wear your coat is to have it hanging off you like a rapper’s trousers.

This trend – highlighted recently by the Guardian, a newspaper that knows about these things – is so new that it doesn’t even have a name.

But it is best described as the complete opposite to the last trend, which was called shoulder robing – in other words, you were too cool to actually wear a coat but in order to avoid hypothermia you would condescend to wear it across your shoulders.

We are obviously talking about trends among superstars and celebrities here because any normal person who buys a coat does so to wear it.

But the heady world of the red carpet insists that you don’t cover your haute couture dress or suit with something as ordinary as a coat – so for years the coatless stars endured early stage hypothermia in front of the cameras with a smile falsely plastered on their frozen faces.

Of course their faces may also have been frozen because they inject too much Botox into foreheads – but that’s a story for another day.

In terms of finding a middle ground between sartorial elegance and rigour mortis, the coat became a cape, so that it kept bits of you warm while the clothes – or in many cases, the lack of them – kept you in the photographers’ frame.

For more,  read this week’s Connacht Tribune.