The Winter Coat Worth Owning for the Next Ten Years

The Winter Coat Worth Owning for the Next Ten Years

A coat you keep for a decade starts with the cloth and ends with the sewing room.

The question I get every fall

Which winter coat is worth investing in for the next ten years? I get asked this every year when the weather turns. My answer is always the same four things. Dense cloth. Honest weight. A lining that is part of the coat. A sewing room that has made coats for a long time.

Every Black Bear Brand coat is made with those four things in mind. Here is what they look like in the coats.

Dense cloth

A tightly woven, tightly finished wool holds out wind and keeps its shape season after season. Melton is wool woven and then fulled, so the fibers lock together into a dense, smooth face.

The Heavy Stone Grey Melton Wool Western Over-Shirt is 28oz of pure melton wool woven in the USA. The BLACK Melton Western Jacket is 23.5oz wool melton. Both are made in Seattle, with leather backed antique gold snaps and a cotton pinpoint lining.

Honest weight

Weight is the plain number that tells you how much wool is in the cloth. The Black Bear Brand Peacoat is 14.7oz wool woven for Black Bear Brand in the Aichi-Ichinomiya area of Japan. That weight gives a coat that hangs straight and moves with you.

A lining that is part of the coat

The peacoat is lined throughout in Cupra, made in Japan for Black Bear Brand. The Harris Tweed coats carry Japanese diamond quilting. The Harris Tweed Highlander Coat goes further, with a sherpa collar and body under 470 to 500 gram Harris Tweed in evergreen plaid.

The Evergreen & Pearl Car Coat wears tight curl sheepskin at the collar and placket and closes with real horn buttons. It is very limited and retires when it sells through.

The sewing room

Where a coat is sewn matters as much as the cloth. The peacoat is made 100% in Japan. The melton jackets, the Harris Tweed coats and the Camel Hair Chore Coat are made in Seattle. Each room was chosen because that coat is made best there.

The coat that is made to order

The Northern Dream jacket is Horween horsehide lined in long curl lambskin. A size medium takes four sheepskins. One craftsman sews each jacket from start to finish in a full day. It is made in Seattle, and the design has one preorder a year.

Ten years is a short time for any of these coats. That is the point of them.

A Way Of Life.

Shop the Story

Heavy Stone Grey Melton Wool Western Over-Shirt

Black Bear Brand Peacoat

Harris Tweed Highlander Coat

Evergreen & Pearl Car Coat

All Jackets

Related Reading

Seattle Is a Coat Town

What Is Melton Wool?

The Lining Nobody Sees