Filed under: clothes, fashion, random, rants, style, things we hate | Tags: coat, cold, freeze, pea coat, petite, rant, shopping, short, size, winter
The other day, I went shopping in search of the perfect pea coat; actually, I’ve been on the lookout for a great pea coat for a while now, but I have always walked out of stores empty-handed every trip.
There just isn’t anything that fits me right. Everything is either too big, some parts of the coat are off or fit weird, the sleeves are too wide and long, the armpit areas are too low (not unlike how the crotch of pants can be too low if they don’t fit right), or the overall length of the coat is too long. Even the petite sizes are all wrong, mainly because they’re made for older petite people who are kind of differently sized from young petite people such as myself. I just end up looking like I’m playing dress up in everything I try on. It’s unbelievably maddening. I’m only 5’2″ and average weight, about 110 lbs! It shouldn’t be this hard to find a damn coat!
It doesn’t help that I’m picky and hate many of the styles of coats that are flooding the market these days, so that leaves a very narrow selection of what I will even consider trying on. I just want a simple, normal pea coat like the “Classic Peacoat” by J Crew (picture below on the left), but they seem to only have these online, and I don’t like purchasing such items over the internet. On Friday, I was close to getting the “New York Pea Coat” by Kenneth Cole (below, right; looks much better in real life) since it seem to suit my proportions, but they ran out of size 0 in the charcoal color I wanted. Snickerdoodles! It was on sale, too.
(jcrew.com, kennethcole.com)
But it’s hard to find classic peacoats like the ones pictured above. Most of the things I see in store is ridiculous crap like so:
(nordstrom.com)
Well, that’s actually a jacket, but they do have coat versions of this cape style, all of which may look okay on “normal” sized people but are actually overwhelming on a petite frame–it’s just too much fabric and volume (and the design is stupid because it doesn’t even cover the entire length of the arms, which kind of defeats the purpose of wearing a coat)! I don’t care if that’s what’s in style now; this is one trend I am NOT jumping aboard on (then again, I’m not a trend follower). I despise swing coats and other coats with lack of real structure, which seem to be abundant in stores now as well. Trenches are also horrible because they make me look like I’m drowning.
I suppose if I found something I really, really favored, I could get it tailored, but tailoring is only for small problems, and many of the coats I’ve encountered have so many issues, it’s not even worth spending the extra time and money to take to the tailor.
The search continues…
I’ve been doing all right in the past winters without a coat or jacket, but that’s because in San Jose, it doesn’t really get all that cold in winter. In San Francisco, it’s a lot less sunny and warm, and the relentless wind doesn’t help. *sighs* I guess I will just have to freeze this winter.
-Ms. Mouse
