I got one of these (very similar) big Sherlock Holmes style coats once. Mine was an oiled cloth overcoat. Was kind of fun to wear it, but honestly it was not the most practical garment for slipping on to go out. If you really spent a lot of time outdoors it would be great, but getting into and out of vehicles with it was is a PITA as it was so long you had to grab the hem like a dress to get it clear of the door jamb and you can’t just hang it on the back of a chair at the coffee shop unless you fold it over a few times. Plus the bottom hem has so little ground clearance it gets dirty pretty fast.
Buy it if you want to play grownup Sherlock Holmes, but there are more practical coats to wear for 99% of everyday urban/suburban life.
I think you’d either have to be a college student with a sense of fun, or attending a costume party as Sherlock Holmes. Better find a deerstalker to go with it.
This is too funny. I have this coat, and I purchased it from J. Peterman about 14 years ago. Mine’s charcoal grey, however, and doesn’t have a pronounced herringbone pattern. I don’t wear it anymore, and am willing to sell it if you’re interested and it’s your size.
About the coat - It is very heavy. The cape is detachable and is also heavy and, because of how it attaches to the coat, causes a bit of a bulge at the back of the collar. Also, the coat is not really all that appealing without the cape and makes the wearer look bigger in the midriff than they actually are. Having said this, the coat will keep you very warm.
The coat was not in style when I purchased it, but I wore it anyway, and did receive a lot of positive comments as it is so different than anything else out there for men. I outgrew the coat around the same time I lost interest in wearing it; I was a beanpole with a 26 inch waist when I bought it. It’s been in storage ever since.
J Peterman is very real and predates Seinfeld. The catalogs are so eccentric and written in such an over the top style that Seinfeld decided to work it into its story-line which led many people to believe that J Peterman is fictional (he is a real person) or that the company was a spin off of the show. J Peterman had severe financial problems in the late 1990’s but it is back now.
I get the catalogs and read them from cover to cover. I order a bunch of my clothes from them and I am usually happy with them but sometimes they throw out something bizarre like the overcoat in question. I can’t see myself wearing that.
Well it’s an interesting design. There is no way you could wear a coat like that without looking affected. You might be able to pull it off in my counter-culturally affected city, though, where I often see men wearing kilts, top hats, velvet capes, and other wacko garb.
Yup. They are sort of like what LL Bean, J Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch used to be about 15 years ago before they appeared in every shopping mall in the country.