Today is the coats edition of Buy it or Leave it!
I figure a lot of us don’t want to buy an expensive coat only to have to take it in to an alterations shop and spend more money to have it adjusted. So, I went to Target so you can see the end of the line coats they have left on the shelves.
First off, I tried on a light pink adorable little coat in a size Small. The sleeve fit perfectly, and since I can sew, I’m tempted to buy the coat on super sale so I can copy the sleeve. The rest of the coat just doesn’t fit. The bust is tight and the waist is too high for my bigger chest. Other than that, cute coat! But I left it behind. I really do love the tapered in waist and the flared skirt of the coat. Excellent design if I didn’t have priorities for fit.
The problem with this pink coat is that the waist fits but the bust just doesn’t. The buttons don’t fit under the bust (they are too high) and I can already see where I’d do alterations. Mostly, I’d do a full bust alteration so that the waist line would hit me at my waist line, but it’s a decent fit otherwise. Of course, I left it behind. But do you notice how the sleeves fit? That’s glorious! They’re pretty perfect. Even on my forward shoulders and forward neck.
The next coat was also a size Small, but it didn’t have the waist line definition like the cute pink one ha, and it squished my boobs a bit too much! So, I left it. But it was so close. It was close because I used to have a coat like this one that fit worse. This one fit closer than my old coat, but it would’ve taken a lot of work to get the bust to fit right.
Next is a close fit. If you can see how the sleeve pulls in the photo on the left, you can see why I left it behind. It fits, but not just quite. Sleeves matter to me! I might not alter sleeves, but a good sleeve matters to me. You can see below that this sleeve is pulling. There is dragging, and while it isn’t a totally bad fit, it isn’t the best fit, either. Just for reference, this is a Size Medium.
This jacket seemed fun to try on so I went for it. It was marked a Large,which just goes to show that you should try everything on–EVERYTHING!
And for reference, this is the coat I wear in the dead of winter when it’s just too cold and you need multi layers. I bought this coat years ago, and at this point, it’s a size too big, but it fits lots of layers so that’s good!
What kind of coats do you gravitate towards? Are there coats you don’t even bother trying on? Why not?
