THE OVERCOAT, OVER TIME

WHAT DO fashion-conscious Parisians, pennywise college students and Washington street people wear in common?

The antique overcoat.

Once, long before the advent of designer jeans, the antique overcoat was known as the used overcoat, or simply a hand-me-down. Used clothes were purchased by those who could not afford new clothes. Hand-me-downs were the bane of any trendy teen-ager's existence, as in "No, mother, I will not wear Uncle Irving's old coat."

Then in the 1970s, a sartorial revolution began. Fashion trend watchers noticed that college students, who are often fashion trendsetters, were wearing used clothes. Helped along by the oversized Japanese look and the menswear for women look that both came into vogue in the early 1980s, the great coats of the 1950s were reborn as a fashion statement. Classic names from the past, like Robert Hall, and obscure labels like Dunbrook Manly Fashions were coveted, not scorned. To emphasize the acceptability of retro fashion, used clothes were dubbed "vintage" or "antique." Harvey Schefren of the New York-based Antique Boutique takes credit for the renaming. "People say a squirrel is cute and a rat turns you upside down and inside out, but they're the same animal," he says.

Antique overcoats have emerged from various hiding places. Estate sales, mom-and-pop clothing shops that never updated their stock, never-worn coats that languished in warehouses for decades. They come from the Eisenhower era, sometimes thought of as a bland, conservative time. But that decade is also remembered as a happy time. World War II was over and America was booming. Perhaps that is why the coats are dashing and dramatic.

Their fashion moniker is the Prince Albert coat, or the balmacaan coat -- a single-breasted wool or tweed garment with a drop (or raglan) shoulder. The tweeds are imaginative, clever and exciting. On sale at Classic Clothing of Georgetown are overcoats of dappled gray, red and black; overcoats that blend blue, orange and brown, black and forest green, charcoal and plum. The coats are fashioned with emphasis on both assertive lapels and fine detailing. Despite their relatively advanced age, they look hearty. They are the overcoat survivors, the best and brightest of their original decade.

The coats hail from diverse places. Flint, Michigan; Rochelle, Illinois; Coldwater, Ohio -- towns in the Midwest where the men are big and winters are cold. Indeed, the antique overcoat seems to be the quintessential American garment. But in fact, some of the coats on the rack today are from Europe. The demand for the coat has outstripped the American supply. Hence we find Breuninger Qualitat, a burly woolen German coat with a full lining, designed for harsh German winters. In addition, some coats are imported from the Far East, where physiques are smaller and thus coats are better suited for females or slight American males.

Today, these coats envelop city folk, offering the comfort and protection that a swaddling blanket gives an infant. There is something reassuring about putting on a coat from a past era. The coat has wooed women and witnessed history. It has a mysterious past that can be imagined but never known. Did the lapel once boast an "I Like Ike" button, or was this an Adlai Stevenson supporter's outerwear? Did the original owner cheer on the Green Bay Packers in their heyday? Perhaps he was a Cold War spy, alone and adventurous. Or a devoted family man.

Whatever their past, these coats far outshine the 1980s crop of overcoats. Walk into a store today and you see dozens and dozens of identical overcoats, many of them inspired by the styles of the '50s. In a vintage clothing store, each coat is one of a kind. The shopper has to get to know the coats and pick the one that catches his eye -- a coat that is somewhat oversized but not so big that he swims in it, that has a special detail (an Asian letter sewn inside, perhaps, indicating that the coat may have been handmade in Hong Kong; a description of the fabric that has a certain whimsy, like "Distinctive Alpagora deep fleece -- a blend of pure wool and fine mohair for warmth without weight.")

Vintage clothing shops stock only a small percentage of the available American coats -- those in good condition, with the right stylistic touches. The chosen coats are dry-cleaned and then offered to the public. The rejects find their way to various other outlets. Usually, this means the traditional second-hand clothing shop. But two years ago, Classic Clothing donated 200 coats to Mitch Snyder's Community for Creative Nonviolence for distribution to the homeless of the city. Coats that are hopelessly tattered are deprocessed into wool and then reincarnated as reprocessed wool garments.

Antique overcoats grow in popularity each year. The Antique Boutique has stores in New York and Boston, and sends shipments of coats to Paris. "We've sold 800,000 antique overcoats," Schefren estimates. At Classic Clothing, co-owner Perry Streidel sells 400 to 500 per season. Both men believe that there is no better fashion buy. The price range for antique overcoats is $7.99 to $175 (for cashmere). There are designer socks that cost more than $7.99|

For such a reasonable price, the purchaser gets a lot of antique overcoat. "The garments are constructed with more integrity than garments made today," Schefren claims. "They are better constructed, the fabrics are better, the coats have integrity." I asked about the projected life span of my antique overcoat, which I bought from the Antique Boutique when they had a branch in the now-departed General Store in downtown Washington. "The coat has already lasted 30 to 40 years," Schefren says. "I challenge any new product to stand up to the same type of wearability as your garment. Thirty years from now, when you give our garment away, some vintage clothing dealer will buy it, dry clean it and sell it again."

Perhaps a more realistic view of the antique overcoat is offered by my mother. Taking in the news that I had purchased a used garment, she said with disbelief, "You mean you actually paid good money for a coat that someone else wore?"

A generation from now, when Benetton sweat shirts are on the rack in vintage clothing shops, perhaps I'll share my mother's bemusement. In the meantime, winter lingers on and I'm keeping warm in my antique overcoat.

Marc Silver is editor of the B'nai B'rith Jewish Monthly.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.