Ralph Lauren Polo coat help, please....

MyVintageCocktail

MyVintageCocktail

VFG Member
I've have this Ralph Lauren Polo coat, and am in a quandry! Labeled size 4, and was in the women's coats at the shop. But I think this is a man's... It's double breasted, with 2 sets of buttonholes so you theoretically could button it to either side, but the inside chest button is on the left, so as it is now, you button it on the right. It also seems way too big for a 4 (chest 42", shoulder to shoulder 18"), but I can't find any men's size designations like this. Then again, the belt at the back, when buttoned as it should be, nips it in quite a bit (waist 36" when buttoned); you can adjust the fit by buttoning it as shown in the other photo, then the waist is 41". So, could this be a unisex coat? And does it look original to the 70's, with those huge lapels & patch pockets? It's USA made, and the label looks like the late 70's label in the label resource. TIA!


polocoatfront1.jpg


polocoatback.jpg


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This wouldn't be 70s to the best of my knowledge. And remember, in the label resource, sometimes a label ran a bit longer. that label might have also ran into the 80s and beyond.

The sizing is all wrong for it...size 4 just really wasn't around in ladieswear much at the time. I wear a 4/6 and in 70s clothing before the sizing scale change am in a size 10 or occasionally 12 depending on the item. I am often surprised, being accustomed to wanting to automatically wear more fitted garments, how things are cut these days. I went shopping and a size small winter coat was about that measurement in the bust and it were totally unfitted.

Also, if it were 70s, the armholes would be high/more fitted and it would be more fitted in the shoulders to waist in general.

I could see where you might say this is a 70s man's coat with the collar nad patch pockets, but a lot of women's things later on had that 70s revival look later on. There was a big menswear influence particularly in the early 80s but it made fits and spurts all through the last few decades.

I am voting for this is a woman's coat, a more relaxed more recent cut.
 
Thanks for the input on that--I really didn't know quite what to do with it, or how to date it! The tweed & the banded sleeves, along with those lapels, are definitely the menswear look, and if it weren't for the way it buttons, I would have pegged it as a more recent women's coat, oversized in styling. But when I buttoned it, that's when I got confused! According to the label resource, the polo player was dropped from the women's wear label in 1991, so I'm assuming this is then likely to be late 80s or very early 90s.....
 
Are the shoulders padded?

(it looks like they are)

If so, then they are meant to "overhang" a little bit the natural shoulder line of the gal so hence alarger shoulder measure than you would think. SO i would imagine someone who would normally take a 16" shoulder measure would wear it. (and shoulder pads were definitely around in the late 80s and going strong in the early 90s)

I remember the sizing change that happened in the late 80s or maybe early 90s where the size 4 was the old size 8 or 10 so this coat might have been from when that happened, hence the more modern proportioned/large 4.

I also remember around that time an aunt of mine who had a suit that looked like she stole it from my dad...but tailored to ladies proportions obviously...
 
I am thinking it is early 90's, when women begin that fad of wearing men's clothes and then the fashion industry caught on and begin selling stuff that looked like men's clothing.
 
Thanks, all, for the helpful information--I appreciate it, and am learning so much here! I am not "with it" on much past the 70's, so all this info definitely is good to haveI really like these tweed menswear coats (I sell a lot of them in actual vintage men's coats) & wish this fit me....
 
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