Coat

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Coat (clothing)
)
For other uses, see Coat (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Overcoat, a garment meant solely as an outer garment.
Watercolor painting of a dark-bearded white man in glasses, a hat, and a long, thick, pale-colored coat with a fur collar. The man has his hands in his pockets, and the coat is open, showing indiscriminate clothing of a dark color beneath.
Man wearing a coat, painting by Julian Fałat, 1900

A coat is typically an outer

shoulder straps, and hoods
.

Etymology

Coat is one of the earliest clothing category words in English, attested as far back as the early Middle Ages. (See also Clothing terminology.) The Oxford English Dictionary traces coat in its modern meaning to c. 1300, when it was written cote or cotte. The word coat stems from Old French and then Latin cottus.[2] It originates from the Proto-Indo-European word for woolen clothes.

An early use of coat in English is

coat of mail (chainmail), a tunic-like garment of metal rings, usually knee- or mid-calf length.[3]

History

The origins of the Western-style coat can be traced to the sleeved, close-fitted and front-fastened coats worn by the nomads of the Central Asian steppes in the eleventh century, though this style of coat may be much older, having been found with four-thousand-year-old Tarim mummies.[4] The medieval and renaissance coat (generally spelled cote or cotte by costume historians) is a mid-length, sleeved outer garment worn by both men and women, fitted to the waist and buttoned up the front, with a full skirt in its essentials, not unlike the modern coat.[5]

By the eighteenth century, overcoats had begun to supplant capes and cloaks as outerwear in Western fashion. Before the Industrial Revolution, which began in the second half of the eighteenth century, the extremely high cost of cloth meant certain styles of clothing represented wealth and rank, but as cloth became more affordable post-industrialization, people within a lower social class could adopt the fashionable outdoor wear of the wealthy elite, which, notably, included a coat.[6] In the nineteenth century, the invention of the sewing machine paired with existing textile machinery increased the affordability of mass-produced, ready-to-wear clothing and helped spur the popularity of wearing coats and jackets.[7] By the mid-twentieth century the terms jacket and coat became confused for recent styles; the difference in use is still maintained for older garments.

Coats, jackets and overcoats

Black-and-white fashion plate of two Victorian-era white men each wearing top hats, coats, trousers and black shoes. The man on the left is wearing an open, thick overcoat that reaches to his calves, with loose sleeves that reach his wrists and wide cuffs on the sleeves. The lapel is also broad, covering his shoulders. He is wearing a coat beneath this that reaches his knees that fastens off-center. Beneath that, a pair of checked trousers is visible on the lower-half and upper-half a vest is visible over a white shirt with a tall collar and small bowtie. The man on the right is wearing a buttoned topcoat that reaches his knees where it flares out. His sleeves reach his wrists and the coat is buttoned off-center with two rows of buttons. Beneath this are a pair of dark trousers and a barely visible neckline of a white shirt.
Overcoat (left) and topcoat (right) from The Gazette of Fashion, 1872

In the early nineteenth century, Western-style coats were divided into under-coats and overcoats. The term "under-coat" is now archaic but denoted the fact that the word coat could be both the outermost layer for outdoor wear (

sports coat is used to denote a type of jacket
not worn as outerwear (overcoat) (sports jacket in British English).

The term jacket is a traditional term usually used to refer to a specific type of short under-coat.

tuxedo in American English
) are the same as lounge coats, tailors traditionally call both of these special types of jackets a coat.

An overcoat is designed to be worn as the outermost garment worn as outdoor wear;[10] while this use is still maintained in some places, particularly in Britain, elsewhere the term coat is commonly used mainly to denote only the overcoat, and not the under-coat. A topcoat is a slightly shorter[citation needed] overcoat, if any distinction is to be made. Overcoats worn over the top of knee length coats (under-coats) such as frock coats, dress coats, and morning coats are cut to be a little longer than the under-coat so as to completely cover it, as well as being large enough to accommodate the coat underneath.

The length of an overcoat varies: mid-calf being the most frequently found and the default when current fashion is not concerned with hemlines. Designs vary from knee-length to ankle-length, briefly fashionable in the early 1970s and known (to contrast with the usurped

mini) as the "maxi".[11]

Speakers of American English sometimes informally use the words jacket and coat interchangeably.[12]

Types

Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Men's

Some of these styles are still worn. Note that for this period, only coats of the under-coat variety are listed, and overcoats are excluded.

  • Oil painting of a white man with a large, curled wig of a medium brown. He is wearing a red coat ostentatiously decorated with cording of horizontal, diamond-shaped designs. The coat is fitted to the hips where it flares out and stops at the knees. The sleeves are long and fitted with lace around the cuffs. Lace also falls over the neck of the coat. Underneath the coat, the man is wearing black stockings and black shoes. He is holding a walking stick and standing next to a table covered in red and gold cloth.
    Justacorps, a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century knee-length coat, fitted to the waist with flared skirts
  • A black-and-white drawing of a white woman and white man getting married. The woman is wearing a white gown that is loose at the top, fitted at the waist, and loose to the ground with a small bustle at the rear. The man is wearing a long, black coat that fastens off-center and reaches just past his knees with slight waist definition. The sleeves of his jacket are slender but not tight and reach his wrists. Beneath this he has on a white shirt with a high collar, just visible beneath the coat's V-neck, and slim dark trousers over black shoes. The woman is wearing a veil over her hair but the man is not wearing a hat. There is a flower on his lapel, and the woman is holding a bouquet.
    Frock coat, a kneelength men's coat of the nineteenth century
  • A black-and-white drawing of a white man in a top hat and an open coat that is cut so that it reaches to his knees in the back but it open in the front, curving in toward the waist. The sleeves are long and fitted but not tight. Beneath the coat, he is wearing striped, fitted trousers, a vest, and a white shirt with a high collar. He is holding a walking stick.
    Morning coat or cutaway, a dress coat still worn as formal wear
  • A cartoon of a white man with hands in his trouser pockets. He is wearing a black coat with long tails down the back but cut in a way that it stops at the waist in the front. Beneath the coat he is wearing a white shirt, low-cut white vest, and black trousers.
    Tailcoat (dress coat in tailor's parlance), a late-eighteenth-century men's coat preserved in today's white tie and tails
  • A color photograph of a red coat cut high-waisted in the front and slightly longer in the back so that it reaches the hips. There is white cording in a spade-like design along the fasteners and wool puffs along the shoulders. The collar is high and black but opens at in a V-shape along the neck. The cuffs are also black with white cording in the same spade-like design like that along the front fasteners.
    Coatee, an early nineteenth-century military coat, still worn with Highland dress.
  • A color photograph of three men standing together, each wearing black jackets and black trousers. The jacket is open in a deep V-shape toward the waist where it buttons. Each man is wearing a bow tie over the collar of their white shirts and each has a pocket handkerchief sticking out of their breast pocket. Their shoes are black.
    Dinner jacket
    , a men's semi-formal evening lounge coat.
  • A white man with a goatee is wearing a maroon-colored jacket that ties around the middle with black ribbon. The lapels are wide and black. The jacket is open to the waist, showing a white, high collared shirt beneath with a black bowtie. The man is holding two champagne glasses.
    Smoking jacket, a men's jacket worn informally with black tie
  • A painting of a white man, former American president John F. Kennedy, wearing a gray-colored coat that reaches past his hips and is cut in a rounded shape around the front hem. It fastens at the waist. The sleeves are long and fitted to his wrists with the cuffs of the white shirt beneath barely visible. Visible at the V-neck of the jacket is the white shirt with a dark-colored tie. He is looking down and has his arms crossed over his chest.
    Lounge coat or sack coat, a coat which is also a jacket
  • Photograph of a buff-colored duster, a front-fastened coat with a mantel over the shoulders that covers most of the arms.
    Duster coat
    or simply "duster" worn when riding horseback

Women's

  • A headless mannequin is wearing a green quilted skirt and over it wearing a pink caraco with with a purple fern motif. The caraco is a fitted coat that passes the hip of the wearer and buttons up the front; this version has full, fitted sleeves, a square neckline, and there is a large gap at the front skirt of the caraco.
    Caraco, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fitted coat initially associated with the working class; it is similar to a Bedgown
  • A fashion plate of three individuals, two white women modeling the casaquin: one green casaquin over a maroon dress with a wide crinoline and the second a maroon and green striped one over a matching dress. The casaquin is a coat that falls somewhere between the hips and knees and is wide enough around the skirt of the coat to lay over a wide-hooped skirt. The sleeves of these particular examples are wide and three-fourths length. It's fitted around the bodice. There is a white man in the middle with a tricorn hat, an ivory jacket that reaches his knees with a flared skirt. It has loose sleeves with wide cuffs, and the coat is worn over white stockings and black boots. He has a walking stick in his hand.
    Casaquin, an eighteenth-century coat that fastened down the middle and reached the hip
  • A drawing of a veiled woman in a big purple hat and a purple, long-sleeved redingote: a coat that is fitted at the bodice and hits above the hips at the front but cut so that it is left long in the back so that it reaches the floor. Under the coat is a white, floor-length gown. She is carrying a riding crop.
    Redingote, an eighteenth-century fitted riding coat with a long skirt down the back worn as a part of a riding habit
  • Full-body mannequin wearing a white, floor-length empire waist dress with three rows of ruffles around the bottom and a copper-colored spencer jacket: a long-sleeved, form fitted jacket that reaches the waist and has puffs at the shoulders.
    Spencer, a waist-length, frequently double-breasted, coat from the early nineteenth century sometimes made of the same cloth as the gown beneath it
  • A headless mannequin wearing a light beige floor-length coat that buttons up the middle with three lines of decorative, zigzagging cording along the fitted bodice, long sleeves, and scalloped collar
    Pelisse, an early-nineteenth-century high-waisted and fitted long coat
  • A color fashion plate of a green gown with a train and lace around the sleeve hems and a basque bodice. The bodice is made from a matching cloth and buttons up the front. It has short, square tails in the back.
    Basque bodice, a Victorian-era coat that was sometimes made with tails
  • A black-and-white fashion plate of six women each wearing long gowns (three white, one dark, two hidden behind other women) and paletots: coats that are fitted to the arms and bodice but flair out to lay over the gowns rounded by crinolines, each coat is shown at a different length and with different shapes around the hem, such as one whose hem is large zigzags, another comes to a point, another is asymmetrical so that it comes longer in the back, and another is the same length all the way around.
    Paletot, a nineteenth-century mid- to full-length coat similar in design to the casaquin in which it is fastens in the front and is fitted to the waist before widening to drape over the skirt
  • Black-and-white photograph of a young black woman wearing a hat with feathers and a suit: a coat with with long, leg-of-mutton sleeves and wide-black lapels with a skirt the same cloth as the coat. The coat's skirt passes just over her hips. The coat is open to show a white blouse beneath. The woman is holding a cane behind her back.
    Suit coats, a development in the late nineteenth century in which coats or jackets paired with a skirt of the same cloth were worn for purposes other than as riding habits; developed into women's modern suit sets
Color photograph of a burgundy-colored, very loose fitting coat that opens down the middle, reaches the wearer's knees and has short loose-sleeves that stop before the elbow. There is a rough appearance to the texture of the cloth.
An evening coat from the 1950s by designer Sybil Connolly

Modern

Further information on modern coats: Jacket

The terms coat and jacket are both used around the world. The modern terms "jacket" and "coat" are often used interchangeably as terms, although the term "coat" tends to be used to refer to longer garments.

Modern coats include the:

See also

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ "coat : Oxford English Dictionary". Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved 2021-12-06.
  2. ^ "Home : Oxford English Dictionary". www.oed.com. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
  3. ^ "Encarta". Archived from the original on 2009-08-29.
  4. ISBN 978-1-4742-5363-5
    .
  5. ISBN 978-1-109-30027-7. Retrieved 14 September 2011.[permanent dead link
    ]
  6. ISBN 0-520-06122-5
    .
  7. ISBN 0-87474-330-3
    .
  8. ^ McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs (2002)
  9. ^ Oxford English Dictionary. (1989) 2nd ed. jacket, n. "...a short coat without tails..."
  10. ^ Oxford English Dictionary. (1989) 2nd ed. overcoat, n. "A large coat worn over the ordinary clothing..."
  11. ^ Christopher Booker (1980) The Seventies
  12. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1971

General:

ISBN 978-0-308-10052-7
)

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