Review: Land’s End Women's Reversible Quilted Long Down Coat

I purchased this coat for myself in January, largely because my voluntary participation in Land’s End's customer surveys led to an accumulation of a fair number of $5 gift cards. Add a free shipping promo and I was in for a nice bargain.

Despite my 3-year residence in mid-Michigan, I’d never owned a really warm coat. I guess I’d always gotten by on layers – layers upon layers of clothes. When I ordered this coat I had vivid visions of being toasty warm – even dreamed about it. I could not wait for my dreamy down parka.

I do love the coat. I do. Even if it weren’t a fabulously perfect shade of Carolina blue (you can’t really see that in the online photo), I’d still love the fit and the warmth. Unfortunately there is an infuriating design flaw that has rendered me insanely irritated on more than one occasion.

The offending feature is as follows: “Two invisible side pockets and two-way front zipper.”

The front placket includes an underlying snap panel – seven snaps total. The snaps need NOT be joined in order to close the jacket. Herein lies my problem. I prefer to only zip my coat closed. However, the zipper tends to catch on the inner “extra” placket where the snaps are with annoying frequency.

Could this not have been prevented? I mean honestly, even if I lived in Wisconsin I don’t think I would take the time to first snap my coat and then zip it up. Closed is closed. Closed times two without an entire extra layer doesn't make a coat warmer! But what do I know? I've lived in North Carolina for all but approximately seven years of my life.

Expert or not, I must admit to loving my "Reversible Quilted Long Down Coat" - even if I occasionally (hmmm...actually often) want to rip the damn thing to shreds!