I don’t want to wear my old fur coat anymore, and even shearling doesn’t seem right, but I’ve always avoided puffers because they make me feel like the Michelin Man. I get cold quickly, and most wool coats aren’t warm enough for real winter. Any suggestions for a chill-prone urbanite? — Danielle, Ann Arbor, Mich.
As death and taxes are to life — absolute certainties — so, too, is the fact that if once upon a time an item of clothing was regarded as absolutely out of fashion, fashion will rediscover it and find a way to make it chic. Case in point: the puffer coat.
Its renaissance has been taking place for a while now, but as more and more brands give up on fur (Dolce & Gabbana is the latest), it may be the most style-forward alternative. Which means it’s time to revisit any prejudice against the puffy stuff.
As Ikram Goldman, who owns Ikram, the go-to Chicago boutique for the city’s power dressers, said when I asked how she felt about the garment: “I am wearing only a puffer, and I love it.”
After all, today’s puffers are not your grandmother’s puffers. Indeed, they aren’t even the puffers you may remember from sledding adventures as a child. They are often ultralight — not unlike wearing a warm bath — and streamlined.
Pretty much all designers have tried their hand at it, including Demna, who arguably kick-started the current trend with his first Balenciaga collection, and Kanye West, whose Yeezy x Gap version was the first product to emerge from that collaboration (and is still one of only two) — though it has no closures, so is probably not the answer for you.
The Moncler Genius program, in which the company enlists a set of high fashion names to reimagine its trademark outerwear, has attracted Rick Owens, Simone Rocha, Jonathan Anderson, Craig Green, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Kei Ninomiya of Noir, to name a few.
And this is not an entirely new phenomenon. Eddie Bauer is generally considered the father of the ready-to-wear puffer coat, having invented an eiderdown-insulated garment in 1936 after almost dying on a fishing trip. (It was later licensed by the Air Force and called “the Skyliner.”) Only a year later, though, the couturier Charles James created the “pneumatic jacket,” a sinuously quilted satin puffer that was probably the first high fashion example.
Then there’s the Norma Kamali sleeping bag coat, one of the definitive fashion pieces of 1973 and still a statement today. (When the great fashion editor André Leon Talley died recently, many of his obituaries included a photo of him in his prized cherry red Kamali sleeping bag coat.).
Prices range from the very affordable (“I’m obsessed with this puffer from
