The Crombie Coat - From Savile Row Cloth to Terrace Uniform

Ask someone to picture a skinhead in his Sunday best, and the coat they imagine is almost certainly a Crombie. Knee length, dark, with a velvet or contrast collar, worn buttoned to the neck over a shirt and tie. It looks like something a bank manager would wear. That contradiction, working class youth in a coat cut for gentlemen, is the whole story of the Crombie.

What the Crombie coat actually is

“Crombie” describes a single breasted, knee length overcoat, usually in dark wool, often finished with a velvet collar and a half belt or single vent at the back. The silhouette borrows from the chesterfield, a formal Victorian overcoat style long associated with Savile Row.

Here is the twist you need to understand before anything else: Crombie is also the name of a real company, and over time the two things pulled apart. The name became a byword for the style itself, the way “hoover” became a word for vacuum cleaners. Plenty of coats sold and worn as “Crombies” over the decades were never made by the actual Crombie firm at all. Both meanings are still in circulation, and you will see them used interchangeably.

Historical origins

The company behind the name, J&J Crombie, was founded in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1805 by John Crombie and his son James. It started life as a woollen mill, not a coat maker, spinning and weaving cloth that it sold on to tailors, including firms working on Savile Row in London. For most of the nineteenth century, Crombie was a fabric business first and a garment brand second.

That cloth built a serious reputation. Crombie wool won recognition at major international exhibitions in the mid 1800s, and the quality was good enough to attract military buyers. The military relationship goes back to the 1860s, when large cloth orders (including, notably, from the Confederate side of the American Civil War) expanded the business well beyond civilian tailoring. It deepened in the twentieth century: Crombie cloth went into a large share of British Army officers’ overcoats in the First World War, and by the Second World War the firm was supplying overcoats to army, navy, and RAF officers as well as civilians, cementing its standing as a maker of serious, durable cloth rather than a passing fashion.

For a long stretch, Crombie coats sat firmly in upper class and establishment wardrobes: military officers, politicians, and well heeled Londoners who wanted an overcoat that would outlast a decade of winters. The brand only moved into manufacturing finished coats itself later in the twentieth century, decades after the cloth had already made its name.

How the terraces got hold of it

The route from officers’ mess to football terrace runs through Britain’s youth subcultures of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Early skinhead style, which grew out of mod and Jamaican rude boy influences, favoured practical working class gear: sheepskin coats, donkey jackets, and Harrington jackets for daily wear. As the look matured into what’s often called suedehead style, roughly from 1969 into the early 1970s, the wardrobe got sharper and more formal. Mohair suits, button down shirts, brogues, and the Crombie style overcoat became the smart uniform for evenings out, football away days, and anywhere a young man wanted to look like he had money he probably didn’t.

The appeal was partly practical: a proper wool overcoat is warm, holds a crease, and looks expensive without actually being unaffordable if you saved a few weeks’ wages. But it was also a statement. Wearing a coat associated with bank managers and army officers, while standing on a terrace or outside a pub with your mates, was a deliberate bit of class theatre. It said: we can dress as sharp as anyone, on our own terms.

This is also where the genericised version of the name took hold. Market stalls and menswear shops sold plenty of “Crombie style” overcoats that had nothing to do with the actual Aberdeen mill, and young buyers rarely cared about the distinction. What mattered was the cut and the collar, not the label sewn inside.

Key elements of the look

A few details define the style as it was worn on the terraces and in suedehead circles:

• Cut: single breasted, knee length, tailored through the body rather than boxy.
• Collar: often finished in black velvet or a contrasting fabric, one of the style’s most recognisable details.
• Colour: navy, charcoal, or black were the standard choices, kept deliberately understated.
• Styling: worn over a fitted suit or smart trousers with a shirt and tie, and usually paired with polished brogues or loafers, never trainers.
• Fit: close enough to look tailored, never oversized or slouchy.

The coat worked as part of a wider outfit built around precision. Everything about suedehead and later casual dressing was about looking deliberately put together, and the Crombie was the finishing layer that pulled the rest of the look into line.

Modern context and evolution

The coat never really left British menswear. It resurfaced through the mod revival of the late 1970s, stayed present in the 2 Tone and skinhead scenes into the 1980s, and became a fixture of football casual culture, where smart, expensive looking outerwear was as much a badge of identity as branded sportswear. Away days in the 1980s and 1990s regularly featured groups of men in near identical dark overcoats, a look that had as much to do with terrace pride as with warmth.

Outside subculture, the Crombie name has drifted in and out of mainstream fashion cycles, occasionally picked up by tailoring labels and designers referencing British heritage menswear. The actual company has changed hands more than once over the past century, and production has moved between different mills and manufacturers, but the coat style itself, the collar, the cut, the length, has stayed remarkably consistent.

Common misconceptions

“Only skinheads wore Crombies.” The style predates skinhead culture by well over a century and was worn by military officers and City gentlemen long before it reached the terraces. Skinheads and suedeheads adopted an existing formal garment rather than inventing it.

“A Crombie coat always comes from the Crombie company.” Not necessarily. Because the name became generic for the style, a large share of coats called Crombies over the decades were made by other manufacturers entirely. If you want the genuine article, check the label, not just the cut.

“It’s a skinhead only symbol, so it carries the same political baggage sometimes attached to later skinhead offshoots.” The coat itself has no political charge. It’s a menswear staple that different groups, working class and establishment alike, have worn for different reasons across two centuries.

FAQ

Why does the coat have a velvet collar? The contrast collar comes from formal Victorian overcoat design, where a plush fabric collar signalled quality and set the coat apart from plainer everyday wear. Subcultures kept the detail because it read as sharp and distinctive.

Is the Crombie the same as a Chesterfield coat? They’re closely related. The Crombie style borrows heavily from the chesterfield’s single breasted, knee length cut, and the two names are sometimes used loosely for the same kind of coat.

Do people still wear Crombie style coats today? Yes. You’ll see them in football casual circles, in mod and skinhead revival scenes, and in general menswear as a smart winter overcoat, worn well outside any subculture context.