Blast from the past: Duffle coats wear a school staple
No one, not Winston Churchill, or Liam Gallager, or Jarvis Cocker, has ever quite rocked a duffle coat as well as toggled pioneer Paddington Bear.
Paddington in Peru is currently showing in cinemas, and for many of us, the duffle-wearing bear will bring to mind the staple of primary school days. Ok, the horn toggles were easy to master for little hands (or a well-travelled bear), but if a woollen duffle coat got wet, it was like carrying Giant Haystacks around on your back. And as for the smell of drying duffles, it was like having a herd of dank sheep in the classroom.
In secondary school, a duffle coat was the outward manifestation of inward geekiness. You weren’t an ironic or a sensitive type, you were an oddball and probably had a drawer-full of tank tops at home. Worst of all if a teacher wore a duffle. Especially a beige one.
Warm as a sauna, the duffle coat evolved as a hardy perennial for the British military, thanks to the weight of the wool and the ease with which it could be done up, and over the years their infantile charms have gone in and out of fashion. In his formative years Prince Charles adopted the coat and David Bowie starred in 1976 The Man Who Fell To Earth wearing one. But the duffle will always be synonymous with a marmalade-loving bear from Darkest Peru.