Chilly Styling

OK, so you know that I am always harping on about how vertical lines are slimming, making cardigans a better option than pullovers, yada, yada, yada.  Well, as I was scanning the fall Talbots catalog for last week's post, I noticed something interesting.  Almost every photograph of a coat or jacket showed it hanging open.  And once I noted this, I had to quantify it.  Of the fourteen outerwear garments, eleven were shown unbuttoned, unzipped, untoggled, etc.  Of the three coats that the models wore fully closed, all three were double-breasted, a style that looks very awkward hanging open because of the extra width of stiff fabric.

Now, I am pragmatic enough to say that the slimmer look gained by the models wearing opened coats is perhaps not the only reason Talbots might be styling them this way.  They are in the business of selling clothing, and the more you can show of a garment, the more of it you will sell.  But they certainly are not choosing to not sell double-breasted coats because they don't reveal the sweater underneath.  The fact that every coat that can be worn open is means that there must be another advantage, and a coat that makes an already slim model look every taller and slimmer must stir a few more shoppers to purchase.

Having seen this phenomenon in coats, I had to go back and look at sweaters.  Of the seven cardigan sweaters shown on models, only one was 'closed', and I use the quotes because I count the cardi with one of its three buttons undone as closed.  Further, three cardigans were designed to eternally hang open, as they had no closures at all.

So does this mean we need to freeze all winter to have the slimming look of an open coat?  Not possible if you live in Wisconsin, as I now do.  My personal solution is to wear a long scarf.  Let the tails hang down the tightly buttoned front of your coat and you not only get a slimmer look, you have an extra layer of warmth.