Types of Overcoats: Chesterfield, Polo, Ulster, Covert and More

Most classic overcoats belong to a handful of named styles: the Chesterfield, the polo coat, the Ulster, the covert coat, the British warm, the Guards coat, the Crombie, the car coat and the raglan. They differ in a few visible details (one row of buttons or two, a belt or none, the collar, the stitching, the length), and most take their names from a person, a place, a sport or a maker.

The names help when you search, and when you read a listing, because sellers use them loosely: a “Chesterfield” may only mean a dark coat with a velvet collar. Below is each style, what defines it and where it comes from, as far as the record goes. Many of them turn up among the overcoats in the Vestiaire.

Style	How to recognise it
Chesterfield	Tailored, slightly waisted, usually single-breasted; often a velvet collar
Polo coat	Double-breasted, patch pockets, half-belt, turnback cuffs; classically camel
Ulster	Long and heavy, double-breasted, often belted; early ones with a short cape
Covert coat	Short, in hard-wearing covert cloth, with rows of stitching at cuffs and hem
British warm	Double-breasted melton, leather buttons, just above the knee
Guards coat	Double-breasted with a half-belt at the back, often an inverted pleat
Crombie	Heavy, dark, knee-length wool overcoat, named after the Aberdeen cloth maker
Car coat	Short, about mid-thigh, cut for getting in and out of a car
Raglan / balmacaan	Sleeve seams run diagonally up to the collar; no shoulder seam

What is the difference between an overcoat and a topcoat?

The two words are used loosely, often for the same coat. Where tailoring guides do draw a line, it is about weight: a topcoat is cut from lighter cloth for cool weather and usually ends around the knee, while an overcoat is heavier, made for real cold, and often falls to the knee or below. There is no fixed standard for either. If warmth is the question, the cloth weight matters more than the name; our guide to how heavy a winter coat should be explains how to read it.

What is a Chesterfield coat?

The Chesterfield is the classic town overcoat: tailored, slightly shaped at the waist, usually single-breasted, often with a velvet collar. The Victoria and Albert Museum records that it was named after the 6th Earl of Chesterfield, a leader of fashion in the 1830s, and that the style became popular around 1840. Costume historians point out that what was new at the time was the cut, a coat without a waist seam, rather than the collar.

The velvet collar has its own story: that it began as a sign of mourning for the French aristocracy after the Revolution. Treat that as tradition. Writers on the coat repeat it, but none of them documents it. Double-breasted Chesterfields exist too; a velvet collar alone does not make a coat a Chesterfield.

What is a polo coat?

The polo coat is a double-breasted overcoat, usually with patch pockets, a half-belt at the back and turned-back cuffs, and in its classic form it is cut in camel hair. The Museum at FIT describes it as a “wait” coat that British polo players wore between chukkas, the periods of play. It became popular on elite American college campuses after British polo teams began visiting the United States in the 1920s.

In America it is tied to Brooks Brothers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that the firm modelled its version on the English players’ coat, and that the first ones were cream with mother-of-pearl buttons, with grey and camel following. Camel hair wears quickly at the cuffs and hem, so many later polo coats are camel and wool blends. If you are looking at one in camel colour, our guide to camel hair versus camel colour shows how to tell what it is actually made of.

What is an Ulster coat?

An Ulster is a long, heavy daytime overcoat, usually double-breasted, often belted, with a large collar that turns up against the weather. Belfast tailor John Getty McGee claimed to have launched it under that name in 1866, after the Irish province; a University of Brighton study notes that the claim is his and that little else is known about him. Early Ulsters often carried a short cape reaching to about the elbow. Coats labelled McGee & Co., dated about 1880 to 1920, survive at the National Trust’s Springhill house in County Londonderry, one of them in dark green melton with a shoulder cape.

What is a covert coat?

The covert coat is a short topcoat from the late 19th century, made for riding and the hunting field in a hard-wearing, tightly woven cloth called covert. The name comes from covert, the thicket that sheltered game and where a day’s hunt gathered. Its signature is several parallel rows of stitching at the cuffs and the hem, usually four, sometimes five. The common explanation, that the stitching stopped the cloth tearing on brambles, is better told as legend than history.

The traditional colour is a light greenish brown, and the collar is often velvet. The London outfitter Cordings says it created the coat and developed the cloth with the Fox Brothers mill; that is the company’s own account.

What is a British warm?

The British warm is a double-breasted coat, ending just above the knee, in thick melton wool with leather buttons, based on the greatcoats British Army officers wore in the First World War. The Australian War Memorial holds one dated about 1914–1918, with six plaited leather buttons in two rows. After the war, officers kept wearing their coats in civilian life, and the style became a civilian classic in shades of fawn and taupe. The Scottish cloth maker Crombie says it coined the name for its own version and says it made about one in ten British officers’ greatcoats; again, that is the company’s account.

What is a Guards coat?

The Guards coat takes its cut from the overcoats of officers of the British Guards regiments. It is double-breasted, with a half-belt across the back, and many have an inverted pleat down the centre back that opens as you walk. In its most traditional form it looks much like a military greatcoat without the epaulettes.

What is a Crombie coat?

“Crombie” started as a maker’s name. J. & J. Crombie was founded in Aberdeen in 1805 and made its cloth most famously at Grandholm Mill, where production continued until 1990. The coat became so tied to the company that the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as an overcoat or jacket made by J. & J. Crombie Ltd. The style people mean by it is a heavy, dark, knee-length wool overcoat; other makers now use the word for coats in that style, so on a vintage piece read the label before you take the name at face value. Our guide to dating a coat by its label helps there.

What is a car coat?

A car coat is a short overcoat, usually ending around mid-thigh, cut so you can sit and drive without a long skirt of cloth bunching underneath. The first motoring coats were long and heavy, made for open cars; the short car coat belongs to the years after the Second World War, when it became a staple of American suburban life in the 1950s.

Raglan, balmacaan, loden and trench

Some coats are named for one feature or one cloth rather than a whole design. A raglan coat has sleeves whose seams run diagonally up to the collar; the balmacaan is a loose, single-breasted coat built on that sleeve. Our guide to the raglan coat covers both. A loden coat is named for the dense Alpine wool cloth it is cut from, explained in what loden means. And the trench, strictly a raincoat rather than an overcoat, has its own history in trench coats by decade.

How to tell them apart on a vintage coat

Names on listings are often guesses, so read the coat itself.

• Turn it round. A half-belt across the back points to a polo or Guards coat; a full belt, to an Ulster (some British warms are belted too).
• Check the cuffs and hem. Rows of parallel stitching are the mark of a covert coat.
• Follow the sleeve seam. If it climbs diagonally to the collar, the coat is a raglan, whatever else it is called.
• Look at the length. Mid-thigh suggests a car coat or a covert; knee or below, one of the true overcoats.
• Count the rows of buttons. One row with a tailored waist leans Chesterfield; two rows open the field to the polo, Ulster, British warm and Guards coat.
• Read the cloth label. Melton, camel hair, covert or loden often tells you more about a coat’s purpose and warmth than the style name does.