Cold temperatures are often best fought against with tools provided by nature, as in wearing a long down coat with a hood. Down is the type of feather found in birds underneath their tougher feathers, and is much softer and warmer to keep the bird protected from the elements. If you’ve ever seen a baby chicken, that cute yellow fluff coating them is down. Mankind has yet to synthesize something perfectly superior to down as of yet, and so it remains a popular material for pillows, sleeping bags, and jackets. Down works by trapping air to provide a barrier against the outside atmosphere. In addition to this, it compresses extremely well and has little weight, making portability and storage non-issues.
Besides expense, the main drawback of owning a long down coat is that it loses its protective properties when wet. In addition, once wet, down will take a long time to dry out. Therefore, it’s completely impractical as a form of wet weather clothing. However, for dry, cold environments, down products are ideal. Artificially produced imitative products will dry faster but also be heavier and bulkier for roughly equivalent warmth.
Genuine long down coats are, as implied above, not inexpensive. Many manufacturers attempt to cut down on costs by filling coats partially with down, and partially with cheaper materials. These sorts of coats can be purchased for sixty to eighty dollars, with the corresponding disadvantages resulting from being not pure in down. A true women’s or men’s long down coat will currently almost always be priced at over a hundred dollars. For hooded, fur-lined, or otherwise stylish or thoroughly-designed jackets, prices of up to three hundred dollars are not unusual. Whether the coat is a quilted long down coat or some other design does not generally alter price much, as quilting in and of itself is not a meaningfully expensive process compared to the expense of the actual down.
Since the down is stuffed inside fabric, the jacket may look like any practical design. It may be any color, and come with or without a hood. The vast majority are designed strictly as winter wear, although a small subset are oriented towards fashion in chilly climates. While the looks may vary, the quality of construction should not, provided customers stick to proven and reputable companies. The only exception to this is, as mentioned before, in the down quantity percentages. It’s all too easy to buy an impure down jacket if you don’t do adequate research, so be cautious when looking up product information and ask pointed questions about it specifically if necessary. Nothing else will have a larger impact on your jacket than the amount of down in it (or not in it, as the case may be).
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