“ Waterproof: adj. Physics term. It refers to bodies through which a fluid cannot pass. Glass is permeable to light and impermeable to water. » It is under this definition that the word “raincoat” – from the Latin impermeabilis – appeared in the Dictionary of the French Academy in 1798.
In the fashion lexicon, waterproof clothing was only born two decades later. More precisely in 1824, when the Scottish industrialist Charles Macintosh imagined a canvas coated with varnish, which thus became resistant to the elements. The invention was so successful that in the United Kingdom, any waterproof coat instantly earned the nickname “Mac”.
However, it is important to differentiate the raincoat from the trench coat, which was born in 1914. It is distinguished by its double buttoning and its wide belt allowing it to cinch the silhouette. However, it has in common with the “Mac” its waterproof canvas, developed in 1879 by Thomas Burberry, founder of the house of the same name and a cotton fabric, gabardine, whose very tight weave prevents the penetration of drops. In the rain coat department, let’s also mention the raincoat, first used by sea and army professionals before finding its place in civilian wardrobes, often in a canary yellow version.
Flexibility and modernity
Worn straight and slightly shabby, like Lieutenant Columbo in the series of the same name, belted hastily, like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942), or with the collar up, like Alain Delon in the Samurai (1967), the waterproof coat becomes, on screen, the indispensable companion of taciturn men, soulless bandits or taciturn detectives. But not only.
When Michèle Morgan is chosen to play the role of an ingénue in The Quay of Mists (1938), it was to Gabrielle Chanel that she turned to create her wardrobe. “A film like this doesn’t need a dressMademoiselle would then have declared. A raincoat, a beret, that’s all! » No sooner said than done for Michèle Morgan, strapped into a shiny overcoat. The silhouette is so iconic that some of the American directors with whom the actress filmed in the 1940s demanded that she wear a similar model.
Having become an essential piece of both men’s and women’s wardrobes, the raincoat has not escaped the fashion scissors. When, in the 1960s, Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin revisited it in very pop varnished and multi-colored versions, the Frenchwoman Anne-Marie Beretta, baptized “rain queen” by the American press, reworks the construction of this timeless piece. Which then gains in flexibility and modernity.
Today available in the most luxurious materials as well as in ultra-technical fabrics, worn short or long, oversized or close to the body like a small jacket, the raincoat no longer has anything to prove: nor its timelessness, nor its never denied capacity to protect the elegant of all stripes.
