I, the Overcoat

An account of my making.

I am an overcoat.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about me. I have two sleeves, a collar, a lining and a number of buttons. I am intended to be worn over other garments, usually when the weather requires it. I have no reason to believe i am indispensable.

Yet I am considerably more complicated than I appear.

Someone has designed me. This person may even claim to have made me, although that would be a rather generous interpretation of facts.

My existance began long before I was drawn or cut or sewn. It began in a field with an animal that knew nothing about clothing. Someone raised that animal, someone sheared it, and someone sorted the wool. The fibres were washed and then carded, spun, woven, finished. Each operation required a specific knowledge, acquired through practice and observation and repetition.

None of these people knew me.

The weaver did not know the shape i would eventually take. The person who dyed my cloth did not know wheter I would become a coat or a pair of trousers or upholstery for a chair. Even the person who designed me could not have explained (in considerable detail) how the cloth was made.

Nevertheless, here I am.

It would be tempting to describe my making as an execution of an idea. First, a drawing; then, a pattern; finally, an object. This is a very convenient account especially for those who wish to identify an author.

But the drawing did not determine everything.

The cloth resisted certain intentions and accommodated others. Its weight altered the proportions. A seam was moved because the material behaved differently than expected. A sleeve was cut again. Something originally considered a mistake became a feature worth preserving.

At what point then was I designed?

was it when the first drawing was made? When the pattern was corrected? When the cloth was cut? Or when someone put me on and discovered that I behaved differently on a moving body?

Perhaps I am not the realisation of an idea, but the temporary conclusion of a series of negoatiations.

I am also the product of many hands, most of which will remain anonymous. A label may identify a designer or a brand or a country of manufacturing. It will rarely identify the person who adjusted my collar, pressed my seams, noticed that one side was hanging slightly lower than the other.

This is not necessarily an injustice. But it is a curious omission.

We tend to attribute objects to individuals, although their existance depends upon collective knowledge. We speak of the maker in the singular while making almost always takes place in the plural.

There is another curious thing about me.

Although I was made to protect a body from the cold, I have occasionally been mistaken for the person wearing me.

I have been greeted before my owner was recognised. I have been admitted into rooms where the same person, dressed differently, might have attracted little attention. I have even been complimented for qualities that I do not possess.

This is a strange responsibility for an arrangement of wool, threads and buttons.

I cannot say whether I have changed the person who wears me, or merely the way that others look at them. The distinction is not always very clear.

And yet, even this account is incomplete.

For I am not finsihed.

My sleeves will crease where the arms bend. My pockets will gradually change shape. The cloth will soften, the lining may tear, one of my buttons will most certainly dissappear. Someone may repair me or alter me or lend me or give me away.

I will acquire characteristics that nobody intended.

One day I may be lost..

this would not be a particularly remarkable event since coats disappear every day. And I will probably survive the separation without difficulty.

Whether the same can be said about the person who loses me is another matter.

The designer may consider me finished, the wearer will prove otherwise.

I am a coat. I have been made, but I am not entirely made yet.

 

(I wrote this after reading the essay 'I, pencil' by Leonard Read (1958) which inspired me to re-read 'The overcoat' by Gogol (1842) and somehow the two found their way into one another resulting in the personification of a rather vain overcoat.)

Céline