Floor-length Coats to Consider for Fall 2023
Leaving behind sun-filled summer days may be difficult for some, but for the sartorially minded, colder weather has its upsides, and chief among them is an excuse to pile on the outerwear.
As WWD’s Paris buyer report recently revealed, stores will be pushing the category even more fervently this time around. From classic camel trenches and wool duffels to colorful quilted varieties, there is one thing they all agreed upon: it is officially time to go long.
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Lane Crawford’s Seville Chow, Ssense’s Brigitte Chartrand and Harrods’ Simon Longland were among those who reported floor-length coats to be a must-have piece for fall 2023, highlighting those from Dries Van Noten, The Row and Sacai as their top picks.
Joseph Altuzarra showed some of the most luxurious options of the season at his show inside New York’s Public Library, which opened and closed with a succession of models clutching parkas — some in prints resembling Rorschach tests and others in embellished satin. “I had a very specific idea about silhouette — I wanted almost everything to be long and have this very evening feeling,” he told WWD’s fashion market editor, Emily Mercer. “The idea with the whole end of the collection is almost like nature overtaking the body.”
Altuzarra was not alone in his thinking as other designers too used outerwear, not for its chief purpose of keeping warm or even as a punctuation mark to the clothes underneath, but to serve as the complete and total look.
Among them was Demna at Balenciaga, who, after months of being largely silent following controversy over the house’s advertising campaigns, returned with a show that “dispensed with celebrity hoopla and his dystopian sets…to focus on “the art of making clothes,” reported WWD international editor Miles Socha. The show unfolded in three series and “Demna’s skill as a tailor and dressmaker shone through brightly in all three. In addition to floor-grazing pinstripe topcoats the designer constructed from upcycled pants, there were slick wrap-styles in snakeskin with rounded-puff shoulders that gave little idea as to what was being worn underneath.
Luckily, the models at Coperni had tights to shield them from being completely bare in the face of robotic dogs tearing their blanket-like cloaks off in yet another viral moment. At Jil Sander, Luke and Lucie Meier showed similar oversize and elongated proportions, “as seen in the tailored double-faced coats and trousers, which the Meiers updated with zippers to expand their volumes and amplify a sense of ease,” wrote Milan correspondent Sandra Saliban in her review. “Ditto for windbreakers, anoraks and pants in lightweight technical fabrics, which added to the utilitarian vibe,” she continued.
Elsewhere, Glenn Martens experimented with shredded denim on floor-sweeping outerwear for both Diesel and Y/Project and Daniel Lee went all in on monochrome color for his debut at Burberry.
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