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A fruitless evening
2025-Nov-25, Tuesday 19:33
I need a new coat, and thus my annoyance.
I'm 6'5" but pretty thin, which means that 1) I can't shop at the big and tall stores, they assume you're big and tall 2) Usually when I find something, if it fits in the chest it doesn't fit in the arms, and vice verse and 3) I prefer longer coats so my pool of possible choices is already limited. Knowing this, rather than look online for a while and not be sure what I was going to get, yesterday I went downtown to go shopping.
At first, I thought I had hit the jackpot right away. I went to Nordstrom's and looked around on the men's floor, finding a bunch of shorter coats (as expected) and a very few long coats, but there was one rack with coats that went down to my knees, and they had an L (on the S/R/L length scale) in my size! So I tried it on and it mostly fit:
Cropped everyone else out of the picture.
Mostly. You can see that the sleeves are just a little too short. Alright, I thought, I'm sure they can help with that, so I stuck around until an attendant was free and showed them the coat, tried it on for them, they noticed the sleeves, alright they said, no problem, we'll get a tailor to let it out about three-quarters of an inch and you'll be golden. So they bring the tailor over--his name's Vito so you know he's the real deal--and he takes one look at the sleeve and says he can't do it. The way that the sleeve buttons are placed means that trying to lengthen the sleeves around the button holes risks ripping the fabric. There was some back and forth, the salesman went to go talk to the master tailor, and in the end they're very sorry but that one particular coat of all coats--the one that fit--can't have the sleeves lengthened. They brought out a few other models for me to try, but of course none of them fit the same and generally their sleeves were even shorter.
That was the high point. I went out and tried a few other stores--Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, H&M, and nothing had anything even remotely close. The only one that had something that even fit the way I wanted it was Ferragamo, which had something similar to this but single-breasted. Unfortunately, just like online it was only in that beige color, so despite the saleswoman's attempts to convince me that it looked good with my complexion I declined--and a good thing too if they would have tried to charge me $5K for it--and kept looking. In the end, I stuck around until most of the stores on the Mile were closed and never found anything as good as that first coat.
I ended up just going home and ordering this coat on Amazon. Do I think it'll be as good as the Nordstrom's coat? No, I don't. However it does have an acceptable fabric ratio (20% polyester, rest is wool and cashmere), was available in L size, and some reviews said the sleeves are too long, which is a good sign. And if I don't like it, I'll return it and maybe go back to Nordstrom's and put up with slightly too short sleeves.
More likely, though, I'll finally try getting one of these. They have it in my size and I'm looking for a coat that lasts me another ten years, like my last coat did.
I'm 6'5" but pretty thin, which means that 1) I can't shop at the big and tall stores, they assume you're big and tall 2) Usually when I find something, if it fits in the chest it doesn't fit in the arms, and vice verse and 3) I prefer longer coats so my pool of possible choices is already limited. Knowing this, rather than look online for a while and not be sure what I was going to get, yesterday I went downtown to go shopping.
At first, I thought I had hit the jackpot right away. I went to Nordstrom's and looked around on the men's floor, finding a bunch of shorter coats (as expected) and a very few long coats, but there was one rack with coats that went down to my knees, and they had an L (on the S/R/L length scale) in my size! So I tried it on and it mostly fit:
Cropped everyone else out of the picture.
Mostly. You can see that the sleeves are just a little too short. Alright, I thought, I'm sure they can help with that, so I stuck around until an attendant was free and showed them the coat, tried it on for them, they noticed the sleeves, alright they said, no problem, we'll get a tailor to let it out about three-quarters of an inch and you'll be golden. So they bring the tailor over--his name's Vito so you know he's the real deal--and he takes one look at the sleeve and says he can't do it. The way that the sleeve buttons are placed means that trying to lengthen the sleeves around the button holes risks ripping the fabric. There was some back and forth, the salesman went to go talk to the master tailor, and in the end they're very sorry but that one particular coat of all coats--the one that fit--can't have the sleeves lengthened. They brought out a few other models for me to try, but of course none of them fit the same and generally their sleeves were even shorter.
That was the high point. I went out and tried a few other stores--Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, H&M, and nothing had anything even remotely close. The only one that had something that even fit the way I wanted it was Ferragamo, which had something similar to this but single-breasted. Unfortunately, just like online it was only in that beige color, so despite the saleswoman's attempts to convince me that it looked good with my complexion I declined--and a good thing too if they would have tried to charge me $5K for it--and kept looking. In the end, I stuck around until most of the stores on the Mile were closed and never found anything as good as that first coat.
I ended up just going home and ordering this coat on Amazon. Do I think it'll be as good as the Nordstrom's coat? No, I don't. However it does have an acceptable fabric ratio (20% polyester, rest is wool and cashmere), was available in L size, and some reviews said the sleeves are too long, which is a good sign. And if I don't like it, I'll return it and maybe go back to Nordstrom's and put up with slightly too short sleeves.
More likely, though, I'll finally try getting one of these. They have it in my size and I'm looking for a coat that lasts me another ten years, like my last coat did.
