As early as December (yep) I at last ventured to start my winter coat search. This one being my fifth winter spent in Des Moines, Iowa, which means it’s finally time to nail it. For my first cold season, I had no idea how cold a blizzards-blast this state and the city could actually be.  So being low on the cash at the moment, I ended up just wearing everything I owned at once. Unfortunately, that list included piling 3 lighter coats on top of one another. My second winter was much less of a winter (my fellow New Yorkers, people in the city I’ve moved from and who came to visit me, remember the lovely, mild thing that was winter 2011-2012, right? The third time was not a charm, as the weather has gotten so cold that I gave up entirely and bought one of those delightfully warm head to ankle Uniqlo numbers. These ones, which turn you into looking like you’re rolled up in a sleeping bag with the face and feet cut out of it. To be true, it was effective, but it was ugly as all get out. And the perfect winter coat should keep you warm AND look good. Because I have to believe that we live in a world where we CAN have it all. I have to.

Tip #1: Stay patient

Patience is the most underestimated virtue of them all (of course, disqualifying honesty, decency, and ethics from the list of options). So, be it in need to be used while waiting for a bus or whilst trawling through the avalanche of coats retailers are throwing at you like winter Gatsby’s. If you’re really determined to find the perfect coat you need to see ALL the coats, which is going to take time and resolve. So at the end of the day, a person who is a frazzled or bored coat hunter is never going to come up with the good stuff…

Tips #2: Keep enough extra room to wear layers underneath

The tragedy of a winter fashion is that it is simply inevitable to end up looking like a human onion, layered with warm clothes beneath the coat. I wanted to make a point of this though because a lot of coats I’ve ever seen all seem to have room in the torso, but the arms and sleeves are ridiculously tight and skinny. Having not enough room for layers under the arms of a coat is the most restricting, uncomfortable thing possibly imaginable, so… Watch out, as these layers will inevitably all twist in different directions leaving you feeling like your arms are sausage stuffing, violently smashed in amongst the carnage.