A coat (from the Latin mantellum for veil) or overcoat (the middle English paltok, kind of jacket) is a garment longer than the hips. It is by this length that it differs from the jacket and the jacket. It is worn over other clothes to protect against bad weather.

It usually opens on the front, sleeves are long and sometimes has a hood.

It can be worn by women as well as men, with different cuts.                     
                                                             
At the end of the sixteenth century, the mantle became democratized in all social classes in France. Men usually have two or more, even in the homes of modest craftsmen, and at least four among the better-off, but it remains very rare among women. These coats are very often made of cloth: they are often black, but sometimes colored more or less brightly. The coats are usually lined and wear a velvet collar. The coat can be particularly long, especially to accompany the dress of older men or wearing the ecclesiastical or legal uniform: it then reaches the ankles and also serves to accompany the convoy at funerals. The coat is then gradually replaced by a leotard, with the remaining coats dying more and more often in gray rather than black2.

 Under Louis XIII, fashion codifies how to wear the coat: until then, it drapes the way you want and can hang it anywhere if it interferes, for example on a shoulder. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the cloth was replaced by the serge, which was much more affordable. In the notables, the camelot                      replaces the silk. Women's coats are also appearing among                       
older, wealthy widows2.

 At the end of the seventeenth century, women's coats were born in their modern form with an open dress at the front.

 The coat will be eclipsed by the frock coat at the beginning of the nineteenth century to return as of the middle of the century in different forms including removable pilgrims. In 1893, appear the first fur coats1.

 Legend has it that the velvet collar of the coats was invented to commemorate the beheadings of the French Revolution. In fact, it was a question of mitigating the fact that this part of the coat is rapidly elimi- nating, being then easier to repair if there is no replacement tissue3.

 The fashionable length of the coat is, in the 1930s as in the 1990s, at mid-calf, and, in the 2010s, behind the knee rather than below. Others wear it at mid-thigh. The French military has an absolute statutory length, the coats of officers and gendarment intersecting at 33 cm above the ground3.