My Life in Winter Coats or Why I Can't Commit to Any Man

 Once upon a time, a woman’s status was based on how much money was spent on the winter coat that kept her warm and safe from Mother Nature and her wrath.

Think Les Miserables.

Think The Little Match Girl. 

Think cold.

Think very, very cold.

Now think Anna Karenina.

Think furs and muffs.

You are getting warmer.

You are now as warm as toast.

For you newbies, this was long before shoes and handbags decided your worth in this world.

Now, I am a woman who loves her coats and I will admit that sometimes I have paid a very high price for my love of this essential winter garment.

But in retrospect, I think it has been worth every penny.

Now, every good story starts with a mother’s love for both her daughter and for fashion.

Well, any good story concerning style, the 1970’s and the infamous maxi coat.

Mine was herringbone and it was glorious.

I still marvel at my mother’s wonderful sense of economy, and especially her sacrifice that yuletide season, and sometimes I wince at my selfishness because my father was on strike, and so my mother worked at the post office that Christmas to put that surprise under the tree, for her daughter. And, I will never forget the look of pride on her face when 

I opened that package.

Now, my father is and never was the kind of a man who would sacrifice anything for his children, especially for his daughter. I like to think that I have paid many a therapists’ mortgage off with my woeful tales of a man who couldn’t get my first name right, never mind, my ever dreaming that one day, he might call me his little princess.

The great leopard coat debacle of 1976 is what we will call it.

Here’s the short version, I was shopping and found what I thought to be the coat of my dreams. And there is the man, my father who couldn’t drive ten minutes to the mall to bring me the money, I had saved and kept safely tucked away in my sweater drawer, eagerly awaiting the said arrival of the aforementioned, amazing, technicolor dream coat of many spots.

And there it is, the lesson I learned that cold day in January.

Don’t ever expect a man to come through for you.

And even if he does, he will disappoint you in the end.

The year is 2000.

The coat is a vintage Blackglama mink with Norman Norell’s signature sewn into the inside of it.

This time, the man and not the coat was the stuff that my dreams were made of. 

Yes, I had smelled the other woman’s perfume on him but I was still in that wonderful stage of denial.

Until, he purchased that coat for me that Christmas.

Then I figured it all out.

All dreams must end.

They die.

But our dream coats can live on in our closets and in our memories of winters long ago.

Oh, and the man?

Contrition can sometimes be costly when you betray a woman’s heart.

And these days?

You are probably wondering what’s on my back.

Well, I mostly schlep around in a black down parka that kind of reminds me of my first Bill Blass down parka but let’s not go down that road.

I think I have said enough.

Gentle Readers: Keep warm.

And stay warm.