The peacoat is back in style, after all these years. I feel suddenly youthful.
Navy peacoats — and all manner of surplus military clothing — were trendy in the immediate post-hippie era of the early 1970s. I found mine at — where else — an Army-Navy surplus store. It was the cool place to shop.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My peacoat was dark blue-black and had authentic Navy anchor buttons. It was solid wool and it wore like iron. The buttons might fall off, but a pea jacket was indestructible. It was heavy, like 10 or 20 pounds. Lifting it up, putting it on, and walking around with it on your back was a workout, in those days when the word “workout” was not yet in common use. Jogging was becoming faddish, but running was still extreme. Among my group, coffee, beer and cigarettes were considered healthy.
Peacoats were not waterproof. But you could wear them in the rain. It took a serious storm to soak through to the lining. A coat could absorb approximately twice its weight in water. I believe a water-logged peacoat could stop a bullet. Did a sailor washed overboard wearing a peacoat have any chance of remaining on the surface?
Now I awake, 30-plus years on, and see that my hair has gone gray and peacoats are for sale at the mall. $99 and up! In a choice of colors, including pastels. (I might be hallucinating about the pastels.) But I’m pretty sure, without even touching one, that they’re not made of solid wool.
Maybe everything old will be new again.
Wait . . . Would that be a good thing? — John Hayden
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Living Simply And Still On The Grid 
I often wonder what happened to my Navy Peacoat. I was stationed in Hawaii and I’m not sure it made it from stateside. But I wish I had it.
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I wonder what happened to mine, as well. I’m sure I didn’t wear it out. It was indestructible.
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Didn’t have a Navy Peacoat…but, I did have a Snorkel Coat! Remember those??? lol
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I finally(recently) gave Eric’s Navy Peacoat away during a coat drive…Guess I should have held onto it a little bit longer, I hope its keeping some gent nice and warm.
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I’m still wearing (a rather shabby) one. Not genu-ine Navy. Genu-ine Talbots (circa 1982). Still looks great with jeans, though.
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I just got to this. I’m terrified by the idea of a pastel peacoat, and no, i never owned one. I was hopelessly untrendy and didn’t even understand what a pea coat was when a girl friend talked about wanting one. You don’t want to know what images flashed through my mind.
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In the 1970s, Navy surplus peacoats were trendy in a sort of countercultural way.
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Exactly… I remember headbands and wide ties and Nehru jackets way, way too well. I’ve been watching a lot of old “Dr. Who” lately and the costumes are giving me the vapors. Did people really wear those things?
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Yeah, they really did. The memory of Nehru jackets and leisure suits gags me. I never owned either of those horrible fashion statements, but I did own a number of wide ties, which remained stylish for a long time.
Long as we’re on the subject, we can’t neglect to mention the Signature style of the 1970s, bell-bottom pants! Also, shoes were replaced by boots. College girls wore surplus combat boots to class for a time.
Nehru jackets and bell bottom pants were taken seriously by people who wanted to be trendy. Blue jeans, peacoats and combat boots, by contrast, we’re considered to be the uniform of Rebellion, along with headbands. Most revolutionary of all, possibly, was T-shirts without bras.
Probably both of us would prefer not to remember disco music.
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