Justine Picardie on why Brit girls love a parka.Whatever else may shift in the slippery lexicon of fashion (hemlines, for a start), P is almost always for parka.
Witness John Galliano's latest ready-to-wear show for Dior, when the first model walked on to the runway wearing a white parka over a bright silk dress, or the Jil Sander spring/summer 2011 collection, which featured a navy parka teamed with a strapless taffeta evening gown, alongside T-shirts with sweeping long skirts.
Putting a parka over a frock is a way of suggesting chic nonchalance - a blend of dressing up with dressing down - which the British have turned into a fine art.
As it happens, the parka started out as a US military essential, to keep airmen warm; but it was absorbed into English popular culture when Mods made army-surplus jackets an integral part of their uniform in the 1960s.
By the time I started wearing a parka as a teenager in the late 1970s, punks had joined the search for vintage khaki: we scoured Camden market and Laurence Corner on the Euston Road (a legendary establishment that served everyone from Keith Moon to Kate Moss).
Since then, my original parkas have gone astray - lost in the distant recesses of a briefly wild youth - and I rely on a much-loved, well-worn cotton one by Gap, weathered and faded after seven years of use.
But it's beginning to fray, and I'm hankering after a new one, although not at designer prices, now so high that they seem simply extravagant, rather than beautifully simple (£815 for a silk-twill version by Phillip Lim, £2,975 for a bead-embellished Valentino, for which you could buy two dozen authentic 1951 fishtail parkas, the most-prized of Mod collectibles).
Instead, I'm going to invest in a Whistles design for £150, inspired by Jane Shepherdson, who has always worn excellent parkas, ever since I first met her, two decades ago. Formerly brand director of Topshop, she is now CEO of Whistles, and her expert advice is as follows: 'The perfect parka is such a classic that it genuinely doesn't seem to go out of fashion, and gives an outfit just the right amount of irreverence to make it cool instead of trying too hard.
It shouldn't be so big that it looks ridiculous, but roomy enough to wear on top of another layer in the winter. I love a parka with a stripy top and a sheepskin gilet - but I'm as happy to slip it over an evening dress.'
In the alphabet of what to wear, and how to wear it, that's about as easy as it gets…
