The Rise of Fashion Discourse Signalling
Something peculiar has happened to the British psyche in the past eighteen months, and it involves the humble trench coat. Not the wearing of it – that would be far too straightforward – but rather the precise calibration of one's public opinion about it. We have entered the era of fashion discourse signalling, where your stance on Burberry's colonial aesthetics carries more social currency than actually owning the bloody thing.
It began innocuously enough. A few think-pieces here, some LinkedIn posts there, the occasional Substack newsletter exploring the 'problematic heritage' of certain British brands. But what started as genuine cultural critique has metastasised into something far more sinister: a competitive sport where the prize is appearing to have the most nuanced, most historically aware, most morally sophisticated take on outerwear.
The Anatomy of a Trench Coat Take
The modern trench coat discourse follows a predictable taxonomy. At the entry level, you have the 'Heritage Appreciators' – those who post wistful Instagram stories about 'timeless British craftsmanship' without acknowledging that Thomas Burberry literally designed these coats for colonial officers. They're adorable in their naivety, like puppies who haven't yet learned that everything is problematic.
Next up the sophistication ladder are the 'Conscious Consumers,' who preface every trench coat purchase with a 3,000-word Instagram caption exploring the brand's military origins whilst somehow still managing to buy the coat anyway. 'I'm wrestling with the ethics of this purchase,' they announce, as if moral complexity grants them absolution whilst they hand over £2,000 for beige gabardine.
Then we have the 'Post-Colonial Fashion Scholars,' who respond to any Burberry sale notification with essays about the violence of empire and the capitalist appropriation of military aesthetics. They're not wrong, but they've also somehow made it impossible to buy a raincoat without requiring a PhD in imperial history.
The LinkedIn Warriors
Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon more exhausting than on LinkedIn, where fashion discourse has become the new personal branding opportunity. Marketing directors now build their professional reputation on having the most thoughtful take on why they've chosen to 'divest from heritage brands in favour of emerging sustainable alternatives.'
'After much reflection on the colonial implications of traditional trench coat silhouettes,' writes Sarah from Brand Strategy, 'I've decided to invest in this beautiful piece from a Black-owned sustainable fashion house instead.' The post receives 847 likes and 23 comments, each more performatively enlightened than the last.
Meanwhile, James from Creative Solutions posts a photo of his grandfather's 1970s Aquascutum with a caption about 'inherited privilege and the weight of family legacy.' The comments section becomes a battlefield of competing moral positions, with someone inevitably pointing out that Aquascutum isn't even Burberry, which somehow makes it both better and worse simultaneously.
The Group Chat Inquisition
But it's in private group chats where the real psychological warfare unfolds. Here, the sharing of a Burberry purchase – or even browsing their website – requires the kind of careful contextualisation previously reserved for confessing war crimes.
'I know this is problematic but...' has become the standard preface for any heritage brand enthusiasm. What follows is usually a paragraph of pre-emptive self-flagellation about colonial history, followed by another paragraph about sustainable fashion alternatives, before finally admitting that they quite fancy the new trench coat collection.
The responses are swift and merciless. 'Have you considered [insert obscure sustainable brand that costs twice as much and has a six-month waiting list]?' 'I've been really questioning my relationship with heritage brands lately.' 'This is such a complex conversation!' (Translation: you have failed the moral purity test, but I'm too polite to say so directly.)
The Substack Philosophers
Amongst the most insufferable participants in this discourse are the Substack newsletter writers who have discovered that nothing generates subscribers like a 4,000-word meditation on the 'quiet violence of quiet luxury.' These are people who have somehow managed to make a career out of having opinions about clothing, and they're not about to let something as simple as a trench coat escape without forensic moral analysis.
'The Burberry check isn't just a pattern,' writes someone called Ophelia in her newsletter 'Threads of Empire' (£8/month, naturally). 'It's a visual shorthand for a very particular kind of British cultural supremacy that we must interrogate if we're serious about decolonising fashion.'
She's probably not wrong, but she's also somehow made it impossible to pop into Regent Street for a quick coat purchase without first examining your entire relationship with British imperialism.
The Exhaustion Economy
What's most remarkable about this phenomenon is how it's created an entirely new form of social exhaustion. We now live in a world where having an opinion about a piece of clothing requires more intellectual labour than most people's actual jobs. The simple act of getting dressed has become a moral minefield requiring constant navigation between competing ideological positions.
Young professionals now spend more time crafting the perfect Instagram caption about their ethical fashion choices than they do actually choosing what to wear. The mental bandwidth previously devoted to wondering if something suits you has been redirected towards wondering if it aligns with your publicly stated values about sustainable consumption and decolonised aesthetics.
The Authenticity Paradox
Perhaps most perversely, this performance of fashion consciousness has created its own kind of authenticity crisis. The people with the most sophisticated takes on heritage brands are often the ones least likely to have grown up wearing them. Meanwhile, those whose families actually lived through the eras being critiqued find themselves excluded from conversations about their own cultural heritage by people who learned about colonial history from Instagram infographics.
There's something distinctly British about turning even our guilt into a competitive advantage. We've managed to create a social hierarchy based on who can feel most bad about liking nice coats.
The Future of Fashion Discourse
As we hurtle towards an uncertain future, one thing seems clear: the trench coat discourse is just the beginning. Soon we'll need ideologically sound positions on everything from the feminist implications of handbag sizes to the environmental ethics of seasonal colour palettes.
Perhaps it's time to admit that sometimes a coat is just a coat, and that our collective need to perform moral sophistication about every consumer choice is becoming more exhausting than the problems we're trying to solve.
Or perhaps that's exactly the kind of thing someone with the wrong opinion about Burberry would say.
