It’s super-November, a week we just made up to celebrate the launch of two big fashion collaborations: Kenzo and H&M; and Alexa Chung for Marks & Spencer. Think of them as the respective pen and the sword of the current high street. The collections are very different, as anyone familiar with the oeuvres of both Kenzo and M&S’s archive will know, except for this coat, which could sit in either collection as a young/old, high/low winter alternative. It’s cream, and so nicely impractical compared with M&S’s often functional stuff, and faux-fur. That makes it both on-trend and eccentric. It is also relatively cheap for a coat – £99 – so you needn’t think too long and hard about this one. Also, it is inexplicably still available in every size, whereas the Kenzo stuff is already pre-selling on eBay. We’re not sure if the pen is mightier than the sword – but, in this case, the sword wins out.
