Vintage car, vintage ruins, vintage film, vintage British Warm
Excerpt from Zurlini’s 1972 film La Prima Notte di Quiete. Elegant cinematography, great compositions and score no? But because this is supposed to be a blog about classic menswear you, dear reader, and me will now focus on the clothes, more specifically, the outerwear worn by ‘the Professor’ played by Alain Delon (roll neck) and ‘Spider’ played by Giancarlo Giannini (tie). The story of La Prima Notte di Quiete is set wintertime in the coastal tourist town of Rimini and the beige/camel colour coats worn by the main characters form a visual motif seen throughout the film. A sartorial stylistic movie thing-ey also used by directors like Sergio Leone (dusters), Jean Pierre Melville (trench coats) and Tarantino (black suits). The Professor is usually filmed wearing a roomy, moth bitten polo coat, love interest Vanina Abati is seen in a sleek feminine trench coat and last but not least; Spider and his oppurtunistic gambling friends are typically seen sporting British Warms.
A British Warm is a military style coat not seen anymore today, but reasonably popular up until the early eighties in Great Britain, as worn by member of the officer corps in/off duty or after having retired from active service. But also on the Continent, as worn by people who bought the coat from army surplus, like our Spider in the film excerpt above. If my memory serves me correctly style writers Bernhard Roetzel and Paul Keers included the British Warm in their canons of English style. The ‘recipe’ of the coat is simple, a short camel coloured six-on-three double breasted coat, made of sturdy utilitarian cloth (wool cavalry twill or melton), with leather buttons and epaulets on the shoulders.
And because no post on milstil is complete without some pictures of people you can only aspire to be like: Prince Charles, Field Marshal Montgomery, Winston Churchill, Prince Bernhard and some anonymous Scottish officer donning a British Warm. Hey, at least you can
copyehrrrr ‘emulate’ their style, provided you can find a vintage piece or get a BW made bespoke, as far as I know there are no makers that do prêt-à-porter versions left.
Double-Breasted Elysian Pile Cloth Polo Coat in Bottle Green
Only the finest virgin wools have been used in the creation of this most luxurious of cloths. The velvety pile is achieved by cutting through the specific pile yarns, in a very controlled manner, which gives the most precise definition of the surface design.
Limited number available at No.3 Clifford St.
Andrew wearing his new custom tailored camel coat.
The polo coat as worn by Giovanni Agnelli.
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The polo coat is one of many items in the masculine wardrobe that derive from the ancient sport brought to the West by British officers stationed in India during the nineteenth century. Among the other items, we might make note of the button-down collared shirt (buttoned down to keep the points from flapping in the face when riding fast), the polo sweater (which we call a turtleneck), the jodhpurs (named for the Maharaja of Jodhpur), chukka boots (a “chukker” is a period of play), the wide surcingle polo belt and the ubiquitous knit polo shirt (which, ironically, was made popular by a French tennis star).
And then there is that most aristo of outer coats: the double-breasted, set-in sleeve, patch-pocketed, half-belted, camel-hair polo coat. Perhaps its appeal derives from its ability to adapt to any mood, to dress up or down, and be equally at home with a chalk-striped flannel suit or a shetland sweater and chinos. Some men are even able to carry off a polo coat with evening wear, but this is a nameless grace that no method can teach.
The polo coat originally started out as a simple camel hair, blanket-like wrap coat—something players threw over their shoulders like a bathrobe while waiting to resume play. As such, it was initially called a wait coat. In the 1920s, when English polo players were first invited to matches on Long Island, the grand deshabille and swagger of these coats didn’t go unnoticed, and they were soon seen on Eastern-establishment campuses. By 1930, polo coats outnumbered raccoon at the Yale-Princeton football game—a decided stamp of approval.
In case you were wondering, the camel hair doesn’t come from just any old camel: only the bactrian (two-humped) camel native to central and southwest Asia will do. Its delicate underhair perfectly combines warmth, lightness and beauty with luxurious softness.
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- G. Bruce Boyer, Coats of Arms: From the Utilarian Apparel of Both War and Peace Comes Classic Outerwear. Published in Cigar Aficionado, the Michael Richards issue, Sep/Oct 1997.
