I want a coat I saw in a 34 year old zombie movie.
November 14, 2011 7:05 AM   Subscribe

There is a coat I want. Difficulty level: it's the coat Francine wears in the 1978 George Romero movie Dawn of the Dead.

Here is the only image of the coat that I could find. You can also see it better at 2:07 in this trailer. (Warning - it's kind of a graphic trailer and it is a gory zombie movie, so, you know, proceed with caution.)

It's a wool coat, a little longer than hip length, either striped or plaid in muted colors, with a hood and somehow it has become the only coat I want, the coat for me, the coat of my fevered dreams. I grudgingly accept that the original coat is probably beyond my reach, so what else is out there that's similar? I never know how to find clothes online from a vague description in my head but I have watched the hive mind succeed before.
posted by mygothlaundry to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (12 answers total)
 
It's gonna be hard, but I would start with Marks and Spencer, I seem to remember seeing something similar...albeit without the stripes...last winter.

Iirc, you live in/near Manhattan. If so, your best bet may be to have one made by a bespoke tailor. The cost for bespoke clothes is about 20% over that of rack retailers, but it will fit you perfectly, and you can have it cut exactly the style you want.

If you go the bespoke route, first step is to hit a fabric store, and find a pattern that matches the coat you want. Tell the lady at the fabric store, they'll know more about those cases of patterns than you and I will ever learn. While there, see if there is any fabric that is like what you want the coat to be, and if so, take a small sample with you to the seamstress/tailor.

Provide pattern, get measured. A few weeks later, go back for fitting. Then soon, the coat is done, you love it, and life is beautiful. :)

(Note that most seamstresses/tailors outside of fashion districts do not have tailoring experience that allows for the types of seams needed for coats and jackets. Those are among the hardest things to sew. I personally wouldn't use anyone who doesn't make suits for a living when it comes to something as expensive as a coat may be....just because they have experience with shoulders and arm holes.)
posted by dejah420 at 7:42 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: It might help to decide which elements of the coat are most important to you and then search for those. For example, I found this ombre stripe* coat at ModCloth. It's roughly the same colors but closes at the side, not the center, has a loose cowl rather than a hood, and the stripes run horizontally, not vertically.

My point is: every time you (or someone else) finds a coat that is close but not quite right, you learn more about what you need to search for. If those differences --- hood, vertical stripes --- are dealbreakers, then you know you need to add them to your search terms.

*If this style of stripe is acceptable to you, you can narrow your search by looking for "ombre" or "vertical ombre"; Francine's coat looks like a wide stripe rather than a true ombre, but that might be harder to search for.
posted by Elsa at 7:44 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]


Ebay is a great place to figure out what to call "that vintage-y thing I don't know quite how to describe." While you are unlikely to find THE coat, you might find some similar items looking for terms like "70s vintage coat hooded" or even "hippie coat."

Good luck, and try not get any zombie splatter on your new coat!
posted by pantarei70 at 7:47 AM on November 14, 2011


Oooh, if ModCloth's BB Dakota ombre coat with no hood appealed at all, here's one that's even closer to Francine's: BB Dakota Zeke ombre hooded jacket.
posted by Elsa at 8:00 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Here are a few options that are close but of course not the actual coat:

Brown plaid hooded poncho coat

Brown plaid woo peacoat

tan plaid hooded longer coat

kate spade plaid cape
posted by rmless at 8:06 AM on November 14, 2011


And here's an Etsy item that's close-but-not-quite: a vertical stripe hooded blanket coat, but in different colors. I just saw Dawn of the Dead again at Halloween and I seem to recall that Francine's coat has similar big oval wooden buttons; is that right?

If that's the basic shape of coat you want, "blanket coat" might be another term that helps narrow it down. Another is "duffel coat."
posted by Elsa at 8:25 AM on November 14, 2011


For the link that Elsa posted, those measurements make the coat about a size 14 American.
posted by dejah420 at 10:50 AM on November 14, 2011


Oh, good point, dejah420: I was posting that link more as an example of style than as a "Ta-DA, found it!" final point. The terms in that Etsy link might help narrow the field some.
posted by Elsa at 11:03 AM on November 14, 2011




Response by poster: Thanks, everyone! rmless seems to have found my coat - that hooded striped blanket coat with toggles is IT - but apparently they sold it last February. Argh! Foiled again! Still, now I have a vocabulary to describe what I'm looking for, so I think a new coat will soon be within my reach.
posted by mygothlaundry at 8:02 AM on November 15, 2011


Oooh!! Look what I found! Pretty sure this is the same coat that rmless found. It does appear to be fairly long, but that's a super easy thing for your local dry cleaner to fix.
posted by JuliaIglesias at 4:26 PM on November 18, 2011


Ok, so because I spend too much time on Ebay, I also came across this coat. It's brighter than the one in the movie, but pretty cute and a similar style.
posted by JuliaIglesias at 4:58 PM on November 18, 2011


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