What I Wore Today - Monitaly Shawl Field Jacket

I bought this Monitaly coat last year during the No Man Walks Alone winter sale - Yuki Matsuda's take on a jeep coat/mackinaw, featuring a double-breasted black cotton herringbone design, shawl collar, subtly patterned wool blanket lining, and what feels like a bridle leather belt with sister company "Yuketen" hand-written on the flesh side. With the weather being pretty variable the past few weeks here in Philadelphia, it's given me a fair amount of chances to wear it out recently, where I've found it to be best suited for temperatures in the 40's due to the blanket lining.

Simply put, I really love the character of this coat, which manages to both capture the immediately recognizable design of its predecessors while simultaneously standing alone in its own interpretation of that inspiration. Stylistically it works well in situations that you'd normally wear something like a peacoat, a garment with similar military roots, though I find this to be much more interesting than an everyman peacoat design you could find at J. Crew (though admittedly with less versatility). The healthy shawl collar lends an element of drama, especially when worn halfway or entirely up, and I'll almost always take a belted version of a jacket over that without if I have the choice. I usually like the different silhouette it imparts, and similar to a 3-piece suit it just gives more options without making them all mandatory for wear together. Greg from NMWA wears his without, though I like it both ways.

A quick word on where and when to buy this sort of thing: end of season sales usually beat just about anything that's out there, and No Man Walks Alone has been clearing out their current winter inventory for a few weeks now at discounts up to 50%. I realize I've been mentioning NMWA more than usual lately, but sometimes you gotta strike when the iron is hot. For guys that can't afford to always buy whatever they want all the time (myself included), this brings pieces that wouldn't otherwise be on my realistic radar into attainable territory, albeit still likely with a significant investment. I thought about posting some picks, but honestly you should just take a look at the entire inventory as NMWA has the best curated collection of anyone around in my opinion. Frank Leder, Scye, Luigi Bianchi Mantova, Monitaly, Norwegian Rain, Naissance, the list goes on.

Sans belt

Fair warning - there's a small chance that prices could go down even further at some point. It happened last year during their archive sale, when this exact coat was priced at an unbelievable $159 (I bought it in the $300s at 50% off and it was worth every penny and more), though I wouldn't bet money on this being a predictable event or the item you want being available in your size at that point. Case in point: here's a guy who bought two identical Scye motorcycle coats just to have a backup.

#lifegoals