Meet the ‘limo hem’ – Melania’s mac is only for the 1 per cent
Under the hemline index theory, the better the stocks, the shorter the frocks. The bleak global outlook may explain why Melania Trump’s trench coat was so long it could have concealed two more people.
You’ve heard of a cathedral train, usually reserved for royal wedding dresses. Now it’s the limo hem, as exemplified by the Burberry trench coat Melania Trump wore for her arrival in the UK on Tuesday night.
It was thoughtfully selected, given that the label has launched a collection inspired by the King’s Highgrove gardens: a perfect state banquet talking point. Yet this was not the sensible knee- or calf-length variety you or I might buy if we had £2490 ($5100) to spare.
The US First Lady’s coat is believed to be from a 2020 collection created by Riccardo Tisci, then the label’s designer, and comes in an ultra-elite 1 per cent cut: so deliberately long as to require a driver and the innate confidence of the chauffeured that they will avoid puddles.
A lady’s maid might be useful too, although, helpfully, Mrs Trump III stands at a catwalk-friendly 5ft 11 (180cm), so the only drag being spoken of during this visit will be the fiscal variety.
According to the much debated hemline index theory, womenswear trends supposedly parallel growth in the economy: the better the stocks, the shorter the frocks. The bleak global outlook may well explain why the First Lady’s trench was so long it could easily conceal two more people standing on each other’s shoulders, but we are where we are: coats have been getting longer and longer for the past decade or so.
Victoria Beckham, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lawrence have made the semi-blanketed fit not so much style signature as fetish, in increasingly voluminous proportions. For A-list types who have their photograph taken regularly (and often against their will), a giant coat works to cocoon and to make you look even smaller than you are (see also: extra-large handbags).
The result is that any coat shorter than calf-height or less roomy seems a little meagre by comparison – because, to use front-row parlance, the more “generous” the fabric, the more expensive your coat probably was.
Time was, a knee-length style was perfectly classic and serviceable. These days there is no faster route to looking dated and/or the bad version of corporate. Melania’s pavement-grazer is at the extreme end of the trend, not to mention in a budget bracket only very high-end designers can afford to offer. Yet only this week, at the new-season M&S showcase, Suzi Avens, Jaeger’s head of product, told me the brand has overhauled all its coat dimensions to follow suit.
“We brought in a new pattern-cutter to make sure our (shapes) were really modern,” she said. “We’re not doing that very commercial ‘on the knee’ any more.”
To translate, “commercial” means naff and the resulting styles are midi – if not longer – hemlines, with sleeves that reach knuckles rather than wrists. Anything less has begun to look a little scant.
Of course, as with many things in fashion, some labels take this too far. I once tried on a super-haute trench coat that pooled on the floor behind me, and I am 5ft 8.
Its gabardine would have served to shelter an entire unit of guides. The assumption – with many designer trenches and double-faced cashmere coats – is that one buys long and has it taken up to precisely the correct dimension by a reliable tailor who knows exactly which height of Manolos you are accustomed to wearing. (My instinct would be to keep the scraps and cover a cushion with them but I suspect VIPs rarely request this.)
A warning to the very long-coated, however: beware “too much of a good thing” syndrome. I’ve seen it happen time and again, from ripped jeans to lip fillers. When the masses get hold of an insider trend, the rips get so big there is more hole than jeans, and the lips … well, just look around. Any moment now we will see women wearing coats so large they require a medieval baggage train behind them – and the fashion set will be back in a sensible knee-length.
The Times
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