13 December 2003 01:57
A to Z of magical mantles: From Akakievich to Zhivago, Russian literature draws on the power of a good man`s overcoat, says Matthew Temple:
As scientists ponderthe healing power of prayer, less medically-minded souls
may wish to consider the supernatural attributes of the overcoat. First,
Joseph and his psychedelic dreamcoat. Second, and more interesting, is
Nikolai Gogol's anti-hero Akaky Akakievich in The Overcoat, whose
splendid coat transforms him from pen-pusher to peacock.
For anyone who doesn't know, Akaky Akakievich, is part of 19th-century
Russia's civil service caste system. The system promotes only
low-rankers who look the part, yet, paradoxically, expects them to buy their
own uniforms, including the vital shinyel or service overcoat, out of their
meagre wages. The Overcoat is Catch-22 with buttons instead of bullets.
Akakievich's threadbare coat, "the dressing gown", is the
office joke. His survival depends on dressing for success, so finally he
spends his savings on a swell new overcoat. (albeit with cat fur collar). Lo!
He is transformed. Confident. Magnificent. Joyful. Colleagues embrace him; he
embraces life. Until the coat is nicked. Then he goes mad and dies a pauper.
The overcoat as "metaphor for social status" still resonates in
Putin's Russia, where "outward appearance is very important and
genteel poverty widespread", says Kelly, and everyone jokes about
new-style Russian sales: "Everything marked up 20 per cent because the
more you pay the better it is."
Hitch a troika west to Savile Row bastion H. Huntsman, however, and it's
the coat, not the wearer, that's transmogrified. Overcoats have taken a
back seat in the past 20 years, says managing director Terry Haste. Once,
gentlemen understood their miraculous power and owned numerous styles: full
overcoat (double-breasted, heavyweight), town coat (shorter, single-breasted)
and evening coat (black cashmere single-breasted with black velvet collar -
the monarchist mourning symbol for guillotine-clumsy French aristocrats).
Today, apparently, one coat fits all. Central heating, molly-coddling
transport and less predictable seasons obviate hefty greatcoats and leave
modern man tripping from motor to mansion in the skimpiest of overcoats.
Single-breasted fly front and elegant short, it's outerwear's
retort to the thong.
Nineteenth-century Russians may have coveted exuberant overcoats, but
today's atamans prefer salvation with a small "s". One Moscow
businessman recently took one look at his new double-breasted herringbone
marvel and declared it "too formal" for Russia.
Subtle luxury is the universal driver these days, says Haste. Men of all
nations prefer simple styles in "softer, opulent fabrics" that only
they know cost that extra grand.
Dominic Shortle isn't big on subtlety. Tall, with robust features, the
former designer at English outfitters Cordings calls his collection of covert
coats "traditional Savile Row with a decadent twist". Inspired by
the "old, eccentric aristocracy" of his native Yorkshire,
Shortle's coats (made-to-measure and bespoke) are foppish as they come:
green-hinted covert cloth with an evanescent raspberry glow; gaudy corduroys;
velvet-collared herringbones.
Shortle is upping the ante next year with a four-ply cashmere covert with
detachable mink lining. Cost? About Pounds 1,600 (Dollars 2,700). Value?
Incalculable for the man who wants to "stand out from the crowd".
Put on a blinding overcoat, your posture changes, says Shortle. "You
become a peacock."
Cerruti menswear's chief designer Adrian Smith is something of a coat
wizard.Fur-collared Gabriele D'Annunzio-style models, swarthy greatcoats
and a fur beauty distill the overcoat's meliorative power to one word:
class. "I've had enough of sportswear cabans,
techno-performance-protection-ergonomic concepts. Time to reappraise real
coats, real quality. Coats have more class," says Smith, whose dream
coat is Omar Sharif's military greatcoat in Dr Zhivago.
Overcoats are pure self-indulgence, he adds. It's the idea of
"wrapping yourself in something luxurious, familiar, comforting".
Smith's fur collar typifies his ethos with its "open touch of
vanity and irony". As the most voluminous (and expensive) element in a
man's wardrobe, overcoats command opulence. And, as Akakievich found,
owners aggrandise by association.
Even old-style Communists were not blind to the appeal of a nice wind-
cheater. In the Leonid Brezhnev era, a sheepskin overcoat was the top status
symbol in Russia.
Cerruti's Adrian Smith is not convinced that his reversible sheepskin
(wolf-look fur exterior adds a "rakish sensuality with savage
edge") is one for the Lenins of this world: "Fashion isn't the
ideal platform for political expression," he says. "One tends to
cheapen the other." Still, he's mindful of the coat's ability
to transform an Akakievich into a Zhivago.
If opulence and elan power the sartorial talisman, then the ultimate
spellbinder must surely be one made from vicuna, says Huntsman's Terry
Haste. Harvested (under strict licence) from the fleece of the
once-endangered Andean vicuna, the distinctive tan-hued fibre is the finest -
and rarest - capable of being spun (12 microns in diameter compared to
cashmere's 15).
A Huntsman bespoke vicuna overcoat costs about Pounds 17,000 (Dollars 29,000)
and takes four months to make. Magic, after all, comes at a price.
Cerruti tel. +39 02 48 85 61; Dominic Shortle tel. 07768 933691; Huntsman
tel. +44 (0)20 7734 7441; www.h-huntsman.com
[FTI [The Financial Times]] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
