Double RL Farm Coat

Hope, many forms, from the grand, big and collective, through to the small, intimate oft solo.

It is hope I feel this time of year, stood on top of my Welsh mountain or having sauntered up this English hill, looking out on valleys below and catching the sun’s rise.

Hope not mourning for the dying of the light as the sky pink, orange aflame puts the sun to bed.

Hope at the collective experience, a grand daily thing, shared by us all but often witnessed alone.

The promise of today and tomorrow and thoughts of time just gone.

Moments of thanksgiving, giving thanks often for the things which at the time frustrated, annoyed or hurt.

Because we need, the peaks, troughs and the mundane to live.

We need the action, the contemplation and the frustration.

We need the muck, the grime and the bland to help us see the beauty.

Hope is a connection. A potential contact between ourselves today and ourselves in the ether of tomorrow.

Clauses feature our story, but they aren’t dominated by it, rather they focus on us leaning in to that beauty, those snatched moments where time stops and it all makes sense.

It could be the mercury shine of a raindrop or the breeze whipping on a deserted beach, your team scoring a last minute winner, the exuberant almost sensual colour of a late season bloom, that perfect bite and sip or frost tipping the meadow, your breath catching and sun twinkling.

There’s this ‘menswear’ ‘thing’, almost a stance, you’ll know about and do it, knees ever so slightly bent, in the mirror in stores trying on new stuff, a reflex, an IYKYK flex, from those not chasing clout, nor feigning obsession as a business angle but in this game for the love of it all.

It’s a hopeful act and it’s hope I feel when I get dressed each day because I get dressed not for you, but for me and the joy I take in those items follows into my actions each day.

Clothing is hopeful, these items I pick to present myself to the world and I want the best for my life, to do what I hope to do.

And these items I pick in the hopeful belief they will protect me, assist me and comfort me as life and the world does it’s thing.

Which is what I think of deep into pulling another menswear move, often in sour weather, hands in pockets purposefully thrust so that coat or jacket almost cuddles and whilst it feels quite insular, I see it as me and mine working with the world.

Amongst the strife, the worldly mess and nonsense, some calm hope.

It can be done wearing pretty much any coat, as long as it has that thing, the thing which makes you smile.

My ‘Farm Coat’ imbued with hopeful purpose has that thing.

A four pocket, two chest, two hip, hip with side entry, checked wool ‘sports shirt’ with diamond quilted inner, button front and popper pockets, generous cut to be thrown over and open or buttoned and collared up.

In the colours of Sun’s rise and set, the comforting colours of Autumn into winter and colours bright and warm to lift deep winter before spring gloom.

Refreshingly to the eye and fingertips, wool, or at least how wool used to be, that pleasing heft softened with wear, almost as if has ever been there, over a chair, on a hook waiting, the quilted lining asking me to slide in, get comfy because as the strings in your head rise and shimmer we are off for a ride.

It looks great, a classic, Menswear ABC 123, but it also crucially works, whether a mood lifter, a comforter or combination of the two, moving things, getting mucky, avoiding drizzle, breaking through fog, being used hard.

Bought because it reminds me of a checked coat, sadly long gone, that my old man wore when out on the yard doing all the things I used to think him mad for doing, especially in that weather, all the things I now not only do in that weather, but relish.

And that’s Double RL to me, making the pieces I am going to wear and use and live with, pieces which remind me of my story, our story that’s been and helps me write the next chapter, mine and our future.