Raincoats

Perhaps the confusion started with the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the part where Holly Golightly is wearing her khaki trench coat running through the alley yelling for Cat and getting soaked in the rain. There is a certain timeless look that I love about these coats. The original design is attributed to Burberry, created for the men in WWII. It became a popular style for men and women soon after. There are now hundreds of versions of this coat in all price ranges and qualities and styles. I have even owned a couple of versions myself (sadly leaving my first one in the airport a few years ago) but it wasn’t until this year that I discovered something else… A real raincoat, I mean one with a hood! It’s actually quite ridiculous that I never owned one before. And that I fell for the ads, mixing up “trench coats” for “raincoats” because they certainly are not the same. Trench coats are just really cute coats that advertisers like to put on models holding umbrellas and call them raincoats just to confuse us- often times they are not even water resistant. I know it’s not as cute or fashionable but this rainy winter in San Francisco has made me so happy to finally have a raincoat with a hood! (With thanks to Eddie Bauer for being so practical.) I don’t have to worry about forgetting my umbrella or only having one hand available or predicting if it will/will not rain today. Now I just can’t figure out why nobody else is catching on? I have seen girls every day wearing their adorable trench coats but their head is getting soaked, there goes the hair and make-up! Or they forget and leave their umbrella on the bus or at work or forgot to bring it at all. Somewhere along the way they got confused about trench coats and raincoats too. I still love the classic trench coats and they are perfect in San Fran for the other ten months of the year, but I have certainly learned that a raincoat is not a raincoat without a hood.