There is an image, originally posted in the summer of 2023, in which a bruised fan recounts an alleged interaction with Lily-Rose Depp on their Instagram Stories, accusing the actress of being a) hostile and b) poorly dressed. “[She] had the craziest attitude,” she claimed. “And b****, you’re not even fitted. Don’t walk around Soho looking this crazy. Trench coat buttoned to the top, and these ballerina-ass slippers. What is going on?” The screenshot resurfaced at the tail-end of 2024 when a fully-fastened trench – worn with bare legs and sockless Margiela Tabi flats à la Depp – became known as the “Nosferatu fit”. But the look could also be unpacked in another direction, as an example of a more timeworn hack that Vogue’s Julia Hobbs has coined the “one and done” rule. Ie, when a coat serves as a complete outfit.
Consider the Brobdingnagian shearling number that Hobbs exchanged yesterday with Anya Taylor-Joy during New York Fashion Week. First unveiled as part of Seán McGirr’s debut collection for McQueen, the coat is so large, so flamboyant, that it requires only the most neutral scaffolding to make work – a vest, an attenuated jean, or in the case of Taylor-Joy, nothing more than a pair of nude Louboutin Iriza pumps. (A press blast says there was a suede miniskirt obscured somewhere below the shaggy mounds of that piece, but a “one and done” coat does all the heavy lifting.) Practical, of course, for time-poor aesthetes with photo opportunities to attend, the trend has dovetailed with a proliferation of big, hirsute coats on the catwalks and pop culture at large, imparting a sort of bratty decadence that has seen Charli xcx thrashing about onstage in fuzzy Diesel jackets and, well, not much else, and Gabbriette practically purring in furry coats and transparent bodycons at Saint Laurent and Acne Studios shows.
Which is the point: a “one and done” is not about saving time – because what is the difference, really, between buttoning a coat to the top and sliding on a fiddly dress? – so much as the casual sense of exhibitionism it exudes. Nor is it even about the coat so much as the long stretch of leg that emerges from beneath it. See: Hailey Bieber strolling through Los Angeles in a cinch-waisted Phoebe Philo jacket, 20 denier tights and knife-point stilettos; Rosalía exiting a New York hotel in a spherical Celine coat, 15 denier tights and sling-back Manolo Blahniks; and Rihanna in floor-length Fendi pelts, Fenty lingerie and Saint Laurent mules. These are Venuses in Furs (or in some cases leathers and gabardine cottons) envied for the ease with which they’ve stepped into a state of glamour. There are few people capable of “walking around Soho looking this crazy”, and I would say that, yes, it does require a certain hostile “attitude” to pull off.
