When Bani Randhawa started wearing
her new coat a few months ago, something funny happened: Strangers smiled at
her as they passed. Babies in strollers pointed at her. Others stopped her on
the street, all with the same question: Is that farfalle on your jacket?
اضافة اعلان
“I have never experienced that while
wearing another article of clothing,” said Randhawa, 27, who attends business
school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The coat in question is the Rachel Antonoff
Parker Puffer, a short, black jacket printed with golden images of bow tie
pasta.
In a sea of drab, black winter coats, the
pasta puffer stands alone. “You are that girl when you wear it,” Randhawa said.
The coat has suddenly become a seasonal
phenomenon in US cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Social media
is littered with photos of people posing in it. Actor Mindy Kaling has worn it.
So has actor Dylan O’Brien. The farfalle has become Rachel Antonoff’s bestselling
print, and the jacket — which retails for $425 — has sold out three times since
it was introduced at the end of 2021, Antonoff said.
“I feel like a winter coat with pasta all
over it is a little bit of joy,” she said.
This winter, the pasta puffer has been
especially conspicuous. Lauren Goldstein, 26, who works in social media and
marketing in New York’s Manhattan borough and owns the coat, said this could be
a result of the unseasonably warm weather in many parts of the country, which
allows for outerwear that prioritizes fashion over function.
The pasta coat is “my entire personality
this winter”, she said.
Food patterns: ‘Like the new florals’It is not unheard-of for outerwear to develop
a cult following. But the pasta puffer seems more niche.
In a sea of drab, black winter coats, the pasta puffer stands alone. “You are that girl when you wear it.”
“Before the pandemic, we were very often
told, ‘This is way too loud, too much, this doesn’t merchandise,’” said
Antonoff, who has been making food-themed garments like babka sweaters and dresses
decorated with seafood towers since 2015. Then the lockdowns happened, and many
people spending their workdays on Zoom calls were looking for a way to provoke
conversation. “We noticed that people are being seen from waist up, and they
wanted to have a big bagel on their sweater.”
The excitement for those styles has
remained, she said.
Laura Nguyen, an account executive in the
Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York, said that during the pandemic she
grew tired of her “bluish-gray professional clothes” from Ann Taylor. She
decided to refresh her wardrobe, and at the end of 2021 rented the pasta puffer
from the website Rent the Runway.
“Adding food into patterns and fashion is
like the new florals,” said Nguyen, 25.
Sam Hwang, 25, who lives in Huntington
Beach, California, and also owns the coat, said its popularity speaks to the
way many people are more body-positive, and make their favorite dishes part of
their identity. Other designers, like Lisa Says Gah and Susan Alexandra, have
drawn attention for their food-themed fashion.
Wear it onceRental companies have also played a role in
the pasta puffer’s ubiquity. The coat has been rented more than 1,000 times
through the clothing rental service Nuuly. On Rent the Runway, rentals of the
coat grew by 10 percent from fall and winter of 2021 to the same period in 2022
— a rarity for any item of clothing, said Jennifer Hyman, the company’s
co-founder and CEO.
“It kind of only works once… You go to an event with the pasta coat, and you talk about the pasta coat. It is not going to be as impressive the second time you see it.”
A bold jacket like the pasta puffer is
ideal for temporary ownership, said Sarah Margulies, 29, a Boston-area lawyer
who rented the coat in January. “It kind of only works once,” she said.
“You go to an event with the pasta coat,
and you talk about the pasta coat. It is not going to be as impressive the
second time you see it.”
‘Obsessed’But the effect the coat seems to have on
people is undeniable.
Sarah Katz-Hyman, 33, who works for a
nonprofit in San Francisco and rented the coat last spring on Nuuly, said it
made her more extroverted. “It is nice to be able to put on a piece of clothing
and Sasha Fierce it,” she said.
She missed the coat so much after she
returned it that she posted on Twitter a video montage of herself wearing it,
set to the plaintive Sarah McLachlan song “Angel”. Someone at Nuuly saw the
tweet and sent her a free coat.
“People were giddy when they saw me wearing
it,” said Hannah Tate, 29, who works at a health products company in Chicago.
She rented the coat in December and again in January.
Katey Ghobrial, who works in marketing at
Yelp in New York, said a server at Greenwich Village restaurant Minetta Tavern
sat down at her table to discuss the pasta puffer when she wore it to dinner
recently.
“I feel like a total celebrity,” said
Ghobrial, 32.
But many pasta puffer enthusiasts also
acknowledged the jacket’s downsides: It is not very warm. It is boxy. It is
expensive.
Alex Bruza, 31, an advertising employee in
Los Angeles, rented the coat in December and said it was “not that flattering”,
as it “jutted out on the bottom, and it made me look a little bigger”.
But with a coat like this, it is not really
about the fit. It is about the joy.
“I was still obsessed with it,” she said.
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