TRENCH COATS

A classic beyond trends, the trench coat promises an inimitable sense of masculine sophistication, balancing formal seriousness with easy charm and all-season practicality. Contemporary high-end designer variants tend in two oppositional directions, towards refining any number of infinitesimal details to maintain heritage aesthetics with careful updating, or towards explicitly avant-garde territory, where deconstructions remove archetypical accents and explore new forms. In the case of the latter, one finds assumed features like epaulets, buttoned-tabs, detachable belts, and storm flaps superseded by a new minimalism or new embellishments, expressed in any number of unorthodox cuts and tailoring choices. Playful patterning and material juxtapositions appear in select pieces. PVC, nylon, vinyl, and leather luxury offerings find themselves alongside more classic cotton twill and wool variants. The men’s outerwear staple offers much wearing value in its stoic timelessness, pairing with an endless array of ensembles at all levels of formality or casualness as an anchoring leitmotif.