Columbo's raincoat: the most famous cheap coat on television

Lieutenant Columbo may be the only television detective whose raincoat solved more cases than his gun. He never draws one. He just shuffles in, rumpled and apologetic, asks one more thing, and walks out with the murderer.

The coat is how he gets away with it. Nobody takes a man in that coat seriously, which is exactly the mistake every one of them makes.

The coat

Peter Falk did not get the coat from wardrobe. By the usual telling he bought it himself in New York years before the role, after being caught in a rainstorm, for around fifteen dollars. When it came time to dress the character, he turned down what the studio offered and went into his own closet.

He wore it for two decades. By the time Columbo returned on ABC in 1989, the original had worn out, and a replacement had to be made and then deliberately aged: stained with tea and, as the story goes, run over by a car in the studio parking lot.

Why it works for Columbo

The rumpled coat is a disguise. It says harmless, disorganised, not a threat. Every suspect relaxes around it, and that is the mistake that catches them. It is one of the few cases in film where looking badly dressed is the smartest move in the room.

Why it does not work for you

Unless you are closing murder cases, a coat that looks slept in says what it seems to say. And most men’s raincoats have a more boring problem than being rumpled: they do not work over a suit.

A raincoat worth owning

Toronto gets real rain in spring and autumn, when an overcoat is too warm and an umbrella is not enough. A good raincoat for a man in a suit:

1. Longer than the jacket. To the knee or just above, so the jacket hem never hangs out below it. Same rule as for a coat over a suit.
2. Cut to go over a jacket. Room in the shoulder and the sleeve, or it will crush your suit and bind every time you reach.
3. Sleeves long enough to cover the jacket and shirt cuffs.
4. A proper cloth. A tightly woven cotton gabardine or a treated cloth sheds rain and breathes; a plastic shell traps heat and makes the suit underneath damp from the inside.
5. Neutral colour. Beige, stone, navy or olive. Columbo had one thing right.

Hang it up wet, on a proper hanger, away from the radiator, and let it dry before it goes near the closet. Care for a suit has the rest.

Getting it made

Sam makes coats cut over your own suit measurements at the Vaughan studio, which a ready-made coat never is; ask about a raincoat cloth at the first appointment. Book a time and wear the suit the coat has to go over. We promise not to ask just one more thing.

Where the story comes from: The Columbophile and Glossyfied.