Trench Coat

"We all know what a trench coat is but where does it comes from? What began as a sports coat was later adapted for officers fighting in the trenches of the First World War, hence the name. Since then trench coats have adorned soldiers, police detectives,Nazis, Hollywood stars, Mafiosi, spies and 'flashers.' Ernest Hemingway wore one to draw attention to his military service, but the trench coat also turns up in the work of James Joyce, Nancy Mitford, Graham Greene and Virginia Woolf. Trench Coat explores its role in the modern imagination: a product of science and technology, the trench coat quickly took on a tough and seductive image blending easily into literature, music, film and fashion to become the uniform of some of the most attractive and enigmatic characters of the modern world"--
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.We think we know the trench coat, but where does it come from and where will it take us? From its origins in the trenches of WW1, this military outerwear came to project the inner-being of detectives, writers, reporters, rebels, artists and intellectuals. The coat outfitted imaginative leaps into the unknown. Trench Coat tells the story of seductive entanglements with technology, time, law, politics, trust and trespass. Readers follow the rise of a sartorial archetype through media, design, literature, cinema and fashion. Today, as a staple in stories of future life-worlds, the trench coat warns of disturbances to come.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.