The (T)rench Connection

There are clothes …and then there are classics. One of them is definitely trench coat. I think every one of us owns some variation of the trench coat for those rainy Spring or Autumn days. I while ago I got my hands on this wonderful second-hand Burberry trench coat which I consider my prized possession.

One of my favorite movie scenes is the one from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” when Audrey Hepburn (or Holly Golightly) is trying to catch her love interest Paul dressed in her trench coat.

Every time I put my trench coat on I feel like a part of an old school movie, and who doesn’t love to feel like that, if only for a couple of hours?

Second hand trench coat by Burberry

Handbag – by Miss Dee Hand Made Bags 🙂

Ballet flats by Top Moda

Dress by Desigual, stockings by Jadran Hosiery

Audrey Hepburn earrings by Illegale

Trench coats entered the fashion scene because the British military wanted a replacement for the heavy greatcoats soldiers wore during the 19^th century. Thomas Burberry, the inventor of the waterproof gabardine fabric that made it possible, submitted his design for a modern rain jacket to the War Office in 1901.

Hollywood took up the cause next, dressing both cops and gangsters in trench coats throughout the 1930′s and 1940′s. The most famous cinematic trench-wearer was Humphrey Bogart, who wore one as detective Sam Spade as well as Rick Blaine in Casablanca.

The trench coat continued to be a Hollywood favourite during the ensuing decades, with wearers as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Peter Sellers as Detective Clouseau.

A string of leading ladies also embraced the trench coat’s photogenic, architectural lines, including Marlene Dietrich and Sophia Loren.

The look was to resurface in the French New Wave films of the 1960s, such as Le Cercle Rouge and Le Samourai starring Alain Delon.

One other trench-clad hero is Harrison Ford as bounty hunter Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982).

Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada”

Burberry has been transformed by Christopher Bailey into a multi-billion dollar player, and its meteoric success depends on leveraging the brand’s heritage – it maintains a ‘Made in Britain’ policy for the manufacture of its trenches – while injecting a new vision.