Moby-Dick features the "long-togged Scaramouche" (an evangelical preacher who has gained moral ascendancy over his crewmates) and Oliver Twist has The Artful Dodger, making this at least Older Than Radio. Please note that they are not in any way overcoats.īeing that they are tailored, with pleated tails that reach down to around the knees and pleated vents that invariably end right at the waist (beneath two buttons sewn in for decoration), frock coats have a tendency to sway and billow as one walks or stands facing the wind, without the heaviness or general shapelessness of leather or canvas, which are the two materials that most trenchcoats, greatcoats, and dusters are made from.
If you're watching a period piece from the 1600s to the start of World War II, chances are most, if not all, of your male characters are wearing some kind of frock coat. In all of these cases, the coat is not intended to be closed - most of the time they don't have buttonholes - although from the later 1790s through to around the 1870s, and later on in the 1920s, they could be worn either way. As they are one of the most enduring and universal fashions in the history of men's clothing, they have many different variations in cut ranging from the square-cut military frock coats ◊ of the 1600s to the cutaway-style frocks ◊ of the mid-to-late 1700s, to the, again, square coats that every Victorian and Edwardian aristocrat can be seen wearing in all of your favorite period dramas. Variants also include, on occasion, materials such as leather and, depending on the time in which the piece takes place, even silk. The cape, however, is longer, reaching slightly past the wrist rather than only to the elbow, and an Inverness cape has no sleeves at all.įrock coats, in contrast to all of the above coats, are very exquisitely tailored coats usually made of wool, like a longer version of a sport coat, but much more formal. The Inverness cape ◊ is a lighter garment with a very similar appearance to the caped greatcoat. They're most often associated with 19th Century naval officers, Nazi SS officers, and Russian soldiers. Greatcoats were typically worn either buttoned, losing some of their badassitude for style, or simply draped over the shoulders without putting the arms into the sleeves, greatly increasing their badassitude. Later greatcoats lost the cape, becoming a longer, heavier, double-breasted overcoat, but retaining the name.
Additionally, a longcoat in fiction is rarely worn closed, and many are cut in such a way that closing them is impossible, giving the illusion of a broader chest and more masculine figure.Īn older variant of the trenchcoat is the greatcoat, a predecessor of the trench coat but usually much heavier, and with either a wider collar that can be turned up to protect against the wind or a short shoulder cape. And of course, when the wearer of a Badass Longcoat takes the coat off, it's a sign that he's about to do some major damage - he just doesn't want to get your blood on his coat. A variant involves jackets and excessively long shirts, but having less material to billow in the gusts necessarily makes such people seem less badass. It's especially effective in animated or drawn material, where the coat can be shown billowing a lot more than it could in real life (and a lot more stylishly) - to the point that it really does look like a cape. Like capes, longcoats capitalize on the dramatic effect of having something that flutters behind you. This distortion of the wearer's real shape also makes it genuinely harder to land an accurate attack on them. Certain styles of Longcoat are deliberately designed to distort the wearer's frame, making their wearer's access to Hammerspace almost believable to mundane eyes.
Also, a Longcoat of any level of "billowy-ness" makes an ideal cover for producing any number of weapons, tools, supplies, and whatnot. A Longcoat is the ideal action-hero garment, more practical than a cape but infinitely cooler than a sport coat or no coat.
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