Loden

Mantle coat of Tyrolese origin, manufactured, as Anna Canonica Sawina writes in her technical Dictionary of Fashion (Sugarco 1994), in “carded wool fabric, heavy and coarse, gauzed and strongly milled, with the characteristic hair front, made waterproof by special treatments.” Its “death,” as one would say using using the language of gastronomy, is its bottle-green color. It has a traditional shape, with sleeves open at the armhole, a collar without lapels, an oblique pocket, and a long vent in the back. There are 405 different models. It was worn by the Austrian emperor Franz Josef and the Duke of Windsor. It is still worn by plenty of Milanese males, not all of them nostalgic for Maria Theresa of Austria, nor all “mittel-European,” but they are all aware of its sober, almost camouflaging elegance and comfort. The word loden seems to derive from an ancient German word meaning hair.