The Day After (A New Coat For Xmas)

So it is all gone. My daughter summed it up yesterday morning when, after the presents opening frenzy (she received a LOT of Barbies) she said "I can't wait to open my presents next year". Well, me too! I wasn't expecting big surprises from Santa this year because I just signed up for a gym membership (yes, I am having a jump-start on New Years resolutions and I have been going to the gym on a regular basis more or less since Thanksgiving) and it was said that that would be my Xmas present. But I hoped that my husband would take a few hints and put something else under that tree. I had also hinted at the New York Times Weekender subscription (cultural gift!) that we used to have but was cut a few years ago under the absurd pretention that nobody was reading it (what, the Book Review and the Sunday Style section, that I religiously read, don't count?). Anyway, I only received a little surprise and that was a book on Jacques Chirac, former president of France!!! While I am an avid reader, I only read fiction and my husband of fifteen years should know that! I guess it was a gift to himself disguised as a gift for me, which is fine because I also had a gift to myself disguised in gift from him. Husband is excused under account of too much work and business travels this year to even think about buying presents for his wife (I mean the presents that you don't buy on the 24th on a coffee run).

So the gift that I bought myself is a new coat, the Double-cloth greatcoat in navy. If we go by the definition of Xmas presents as something that you absolutely don't need, this one definitively falls in that category. I have all the coats I need and the color isn't even an excuse as I already have a navy coat (my Elements coat from last year). The only excuse I could make up for this is that I don't have a "dress coat" to properly speak (all my coats are pretty casual. The only one that could be described as elegant and dressy is my black Script coat but because of the short length it is more of a sport coat with a nice feminine touch than a dress coat). I just loved this coat at first sight, which is rear because I don't usually fall for coats (I am a summer clothes girl and I don't get excited by outwear, normally). I resisted it with the 30% off because as I said I didn't really need it and it is an expensive coat but it went on sale a few days before Xmas and I had just tried it in store two days before and put it on hold (my technique to resist impulsive purchases). That's a sign, right? It wasn't that simple to get it (when I called the store, the only store in the city that still had this coat, the manager said that they couldn't extend my hold "at this time of the year" and the day after they couldn't find one in my size anymore. In the meanwhile it sold-out in my size on the website too so I was resigned to watch for popbacks but it turns out that some angel SA did extend my hold at the store so when a bulb went off in my head and I called the store again to check if by any chance they had a coat under my name it was still there waiting for me. The best part, besides the fact that the 30% off and no fs was still going on in store, was that I could purchase it over the phone and had it delivered by courrier just in time for Xmas).

I went with my regular coat size 2 but this coat runs small in the shoulders and upper body area IMO. Usually I have room in a 2 (being the 2 the biggest of my JCrew sizes) but not in this one. I took these pictures as soon as I took it out of the bag (where it had been sitting for more than 24 hours) so it looks a bit frumpy on the bottom because of the creases from the bag:

The feature that draws me to this coat is the waist placement, more than the golden buttons. For once high-waisted is a good thing! Personally I don't like the lady-day, it looked very frumpy on me but I think this one looks elegant without being too little-girlish (a flaw of high-waisted coats), probably because of the military-looking buttons (o the ticket it is called double-cloth "officer" coat). A you probably know, the double-cloth fabric isn't crazy warm but I can live with that since it is going to be more of an occasion coat for me than my everyday coat.
I forgot to take pics but it has a nice golden (metallic) piping that runs on the inside.

On a totally different note, I have a movie recommandation for my movie club fan base out there. Yesterday night we watched a very unusal British movie called "Perfect Sense" with Eva Green and Ewan McGregor. It is a beautiful love story disguised as "epidemic" movie (so probably not for husbands, mine fell asleep). The love story is powerfully rendered in a bigger reflection on human kind and what makes us human. Ewan is at his best as a charming chef who falls in love for the character played by Eva Green and as a bonus he is naked in a lot of scenes and while I wouldn't have thought of him as a runner-up for the title of "best abs on screen" he is surprisingly fit(BTW, don't you think he has really aged well since the times of "Transpotting"? And he has this sparkle in his eyes). Highly recommended with a caveat: it is a dark movie with no happy ending (I wonder what would have happened to the subject in the hands of a Hollywood producer, probably Ewan's character, played by Tom Cruise, would have saved the world).

So, what Santa nice to you? Anybody has this coat? Did you watch any good movie during the holidays?