I got my first puffer coat when I went away to college in St. Louis, Missouri. Midwest winters can be weird, 75 degrees and sunny one day, 20 degrees and snowy the next. When I first visited the school, it was a high of 18 degrees with layers of ice covering the sidewalk so thick that my tour guide fell and ripped his jeans. Needless to say, my mom wanted me to be prepared for the worst.
The coat was a dark purple puffer from The North Face that hit just above my knee—I refused to get anything longer than that, because ew mom, that's for old people. I wore that jacket to death. From frat formals to costume parties, my purple puffer and I traveled everywhere together for six months out of the year.
And then I graduated. My beloved coat was no longer in the shape it used to be (four years of beer-soaked parties will do that to any piece of clothing), and living in New York City, I definitely needed something to keep me warm during the harsh winter. Now that I was adult, I felt I had graduated beyond North Face (untrue), and needed something a little more elevated, a little chicer (also untrue, I would have been fine with an affordable coat from Zara). So I begged my mom for the coat I'd seen all over the sidewalks of my neighborhood on the Upper East Side: A Canada Goose.
It took some prodding, but for Hanukkah my first year in the city, my mom buckled and got me my coveted coat, and damn, it was even more perfect than I could have imagined.
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Biting cold in the dead of January? No match for my Solaris Parka. Blistering winds in early March? I could barely feel a thing under my layers of warmth. That being said, it is definitely a BIG coat. It adds some bulk to your frame no matter how small you are, as all puffer jackets do, but for the insane warmth it provides, it's 100% worth it. Two years later I'm still head over heels in love with this jacket, I recommend it to every friend on the hunt for an investment puffer.
It may not be as trendy as the vinyl or metallic coats I've been seeing everywhere lately, and it definitely has a more traditional fit, one you can't let off hang one shoulder like many a street style star. But it's a classic, and I truly believe it'll last me a lifetime.
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Shop below for more puffer coat picks for this winter. It's gonna be a cold one!
