When the Coat Lost Its Nobility (and How to Give It Back)

Eugénie Trochu is a Who What Wear editor in residence known for her transformative work at Vogue France and her Substack newsletter, where she documents and shares new trends, her no-nonsense approach to fashion and style, plus other musings. She's also working on her upcoming first book that explores fashion as a space of memory, projection, and reinvention.

In France, something has recently caught my eye. You only have to stand outside a high school at dismissal time to notice it: teenage girls no longer wear coats. Ever. Whether it’s cold, raining, or the middle of January, they’re out there in hoodies, zip-up sweaters, fitted knits, but without coats.

At first, it feels anecdotal. A generational quirk. Then you look more closely and realize it isn’t an oversight, but a choice.

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The coat, a garment that imposes something

The coat is not a neutral garment. It never has been. It structures the body. It dictates posture. It creates distance. It marks an entry into the adult, social, visible world. Historically, in France, the coat has been a marker of status, even when it’s simple. It says you’re going out, facing the outside world, accepting to be seen before you’ve even spoken.

What these young girls seem to be rejecting, then, isn’t the cold. It’s everything the coat represents: tenue, both literally and figuratively.

When outerwear lost its role

Fashion hasn’t helped. For a long time, the coat has been stuck in an undesirable in-between: either too functional to inspire desire, or too conceptual to be truly wearable. Too expensive to experiment with, too serious to be playful. The result is a loss of clarity.

Add to that a visual culture shaped indoors. Today, style is built in bedrooms, in front of mirrors, on screens. But the coat is a garment of movement, of the street, of transition. It lives outside. In a world of static selfies, it no longer quite fits.