More Bridge Coats - and coatees, opera coats and tennis coats

More Evening Coats of Every Description... 

The comments here always give added value to my posts, and the Bridge Coat Collection absolutely reached peak participation: everyone had such helpful things to say, really expanding on the topic. And before we knew where we were, there were opera coats and tennis coats, coatees and evening jackets, wraps and shawls. Glorious. This follow-up post became essential.

We are still finding the occasional bridge coat, and there will be more specific entries on this (just to whet your appetite, there will be another Barbara Pym mention …)

Everyone is interested in what the differences are between a bridge coat and other kinds of evening coverup.

We think a coatee is shorter and more fitted. Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver is a great one for a coatee – Sovay in the comments points out a moment in The Ivory Dagger when Miss Silver leaves her coatee hanging in the wardrobe because the house is warm – a rare anomaly in UK life of the era (early 1950s).

One also features in Agatha Christie’s 4.50 from Paddington: murder witness Mrs McGillicuddy has been doing her shopping in town, and has bought an ‘evening coatee, just the thing she herself needed, warm but dressy.’

My favourite Margery Sharp character is Julia in The Nutmeg Tree, and she has a rather low-coat evening dress which is:

midnight-blue taffeta – its bodice all boned up to dispense with shoulder straps – which a scarf or coatee would possibly make do.

Later she consults: “… my wardrobe’s a bit low. I’ve got a lovely dark-blue taffeta, only I don’t know if you’ll like the top. I mean, there practically isn’t any – not even shoulder straps. I don’t mean it isn’t decent, because it is; but it’s a bit – well, dashing.”

 

And there is always the Provincial Lady (as in E L Delafield’s Diary of….). Several of us were surprised to find that bridge coats do not feature in the oeuvre: you would have bet on their being part of her life, what with those cold houses, trying dinner parties, and much interest in the game of bridge. However – we do find this in The Provincial Lady in America:

Dinner-party closes the day, and I put on backless evening dress, add coatee, take coatee off again, look at myself with mirror and hand-glass in conjunction, resume coatee, and retain it for the rest of the evening. 

I think we’ve all been there…

We all remembered her white tennis coat, trimmed with rabbit fur. The Provincial Lady tries to sell it – no dice. So then she thinks it might be “dyed and transformed into evening cloak.” This is startling and memorable, never features again in the book, and fur-trimmed tennis coats do not seem to exist anywhere else in the books or fashion illos of the era. I have been searching for that tennis coat for more than ten years… This is what a real one looks like: reward for anyone who can turn it into an evening wrap.

(We nearly got distracted by the astonishing number of leather coats and jackets in Delafield – as I said, it’s the kind of detail I would be tutting about if a contemporary writer put in a historical novel. But we must save that for another day…)

When I did an entry on Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House last year, my re-reading led me to focus on the infamous shawl that leads to murder. I’m forever saying Never Borrow a Distinctive Garment in Golden Age Mystery World, but this time it caught me sideways, as this shows – quote from the book and then my comment:

 

“Maggie called out that she couldn’t find her coat… I said it must have been left in the car – it was a tweed coat she was looking for, she hasn’t got an evening furry one, and I said I’d bring her down something of mine. But she said it didn’t matter, she’d take my shawl…”

Given that Agatha doesn’t do detail, there’s something affecting about Maggie who only has her sensible tweed coat, doesn’t have an evening wrap, and has to look after herself, and takes the moment to put on the shawl.

 

And then there’s opera coats. These, we decided are longer and likely fur-trimmed, but a loose style so they don’t crush the dress or the sleeves underneath, but still look splendid as you arrive at the opera house.

I am a great opera- goer myself, and one of the things I love is that you can wear absolutely anything there, from diamond tiaras to ragged jeans. But I feel this, below, is what I am aiming for: 

If you see this lady at Covent Garden, it is obviously me. Do say hello – I will be gracious and condescending…

 Top picture is the designer Lanvin: portrait of her in wrap jacket File:Dufau portrait de Jeanne Lanvin.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

 Collection of opera coats, NYPL.

 Dramatic opera cloak is by the Jeanne Lanvin of the top portrait, also NYPL