Formal British-Made Men's Outerwear — Voted by the Community

Britain's cool, wet weather has shaped its outerwear, and several well-known coats and fabrics began here. In 1823 the Glasgow chemist Charles Macintosh patented a waterproof cloth made by sandwiching dissolved rubber between two layers of fabric. Coats made from it became known as mackintoshes, and his firm later made garments at a factory in Manchester. In 1879 Thomas Burberry, a draper and outfitter in Basingstoke, developed gabardine, a tightly woven twill whose yarn was waterproofed before weaving, so the cloth kept out rain while still letting air through. He patented it in 1888. Gabardine coats were worn by British officers in the First World War, giving rise to the trench coat. The duffle coat takes its name from Duffel, a town in the province of Antwerp in Belgium, where its thick woollen cloth was first made. In the 1890s the Admiralty bought the coats in quantity for the Royal Navy, and they were worn widely by British forces in the Second World War. Surplus coats sold after the war carried the style into civilian wardrobes.