This season, this season, will be the year that you finally get your winter coat purchase right. Learning from the lessons of years gone by, you'll invest in a staple item that'll stop people in their tracks and go 'Hey, great coat!', the sort of coat you'll still be wearing in twenty years time when your daughter will nick off you and proclaim it 'vintage'. This year, will be your year coat-forager.
Execept it won't be, because buying a coat is bloody hard. Here's why.
There's a million of them
Scrolling through the coat section on ASOS is enough to make you want to lie down in a darkened room while Nancy the maid mops your brow like a tragic Victorian heroine. Right now there's nearly 1,100 on offer on ASOS alone and that's not even taking into account all the high street shops you'll traipse round to 'double check' you've made the right decision. Book yourself a post-coat buying holiday love, you've earned it.
You'll accidentally buy the 'it' coat
A few years ago it was that Topshop one with the leather arms, before that it was the Warehouse military number. And let's not forget that giant Zara and Primark reversible tartan scarf that every second girl on the high street had (still has). Buy too soon in the season before the coat that everyone wants has been established and you'll look like you're wearing a uniform with every other twenty-something girl in your town.
It won't match
Buying a fancy printed coat is all well and good but when you're spending that much money on a item of clothing you're going to want to make sure it matches most, if not all, of the clothes that you already own. There's no good wanging all of £90 on a red and white stripey thing you saw Kendall Jenner wearing if it doesn't match your mainly pink and yellow wardrobe. Kendall got that shit for free, you don't have that luxury.
You'll go cheap, and regret it hard
Why spend £120 when I can spend £40? You'll cry as you realise you've got to the first snowfall and still not purchased a coat and have developed a mild case of frostbite on your back. So you'll head on into one of the budget shops and buy a coat that almost looks like that one online except two weeks later it'll be covered in bobble and that hole under the arm won't be helping the frostbite.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.