Long ago, when I was a 20-something unmarried childless grad student, I was fascinated by a look I called Tribeca Whole Foods Mom. These were women I’d see when grocery-shopping, when living in the below-market-rent Battery Park City studio apartment I shared with my now-husband. We were Tribeca-adjacent, but that was its own intriguing world. These women were all 5’11”, had what I think is called honey-blonde hair (long, beach-wavy, center-parted), wore highest-end athleisure and enormous diamond rings.
But these days I find myself more drawn to the Upper East Side mom look of my own childhood. They all had this coat, paired with the apparently obsolete Hervé Chapelier bags.
Or not exactly. It’s more that my wardrobe criteria have become, Would this have looked out of place in 1994? and if so, it doesn’t make the grade. And, realizing that 1990s teenager does not work on a woman this close to 40 (not that I’d say no to the right crushed velvet Betsey Johnson), 1990s momcore it is. The Tribeca look now strikes me as dated in a bad way, and as something relegated to the aesthetics of that Peter Thiel-run dating app for conservatives.
Then there are the moms back here on 2022 planet earth, in Toronto. They all have this coat. The Instagram ad algorithm has decided to bombard me with the very same. Is it that the little person who lives inside my phone knows my demographics? Do all these women have the coat because they too were presented with this ad? (No shade—this is probably how I ended up with the raincoat I did.)
What are its supposed selling points?
“Our forever topselling piece. Iconic HORSES worn by feminist icon, Margaret Atwood, and countless others.”
Do you find yourself wanting to dress more like Margaret Atwood? I mean I could see wanting to wrap myself in a large house in the Annex but can’t say I’d given any thought to what was in Atwood’s closet.
The coat is $595 CAD and made in not just Canada but Toronto. The workshop is on the very coolest part of Queen West. A Horses Atelier tote bag one-ups a Kotn one.
But then there’s the actual coat.
“62% wool, 23% acrylic, 12% polyester, 3% other fibres.”
More troublingly, it doesn’t close. Why does this, a coat for Toronto, which is in Canada, not close? “We eliminated as much as we could (buttons, belts, flourishes) for timelessness, versatility and ease.”
Someone I was telling for not the first time about my coat-thoughts suggested I was protesting too much. That my objections stem from secretly wanting this coat. To which I can only say, sure… if it actually closed, and were all wool, and were basically an entirely different coat. I have no objection to being a sheep (heh) who likes an It item. But a $600 coat that doesn’t close in order to be timeless, as if such a thing existed, as if this coat will not scream Late Pandemic, is a bridge too far.
And yet I now feel like a bit (more) of a dork, walking around with my own ultimately rather similar two fall coats, one camel (2011 Comptoir des Cottoniers outlet store, Paris), one gray (2015 Aritzia, Toronto), all buttoned up because it’s you know cold. I’m the adult equivalent of the kid who insists upon wearing both backpack straps rather than jauntily hanging it over one shoulder.
Chapelier bags were the BEST. Hard no on any coat that doesnt close ( and a no to the deep v neck coat - brrrrr) . Not a fan of acrylic either. Again, too cold.
And the L. L. Bean one is a "riding jacket". I guess the actual way to make a mom jacket timeless is to theme the marketing around horses.