The coasts at USHIST look Ok but I'd prefer a 4 button to a three and its hard to tell when its not on a body. The others just don't look right. The ones at River Junction (who I have been dealing with for almost 20 years) have patch pockets, which were done but were a mark of a relatively low quality coat, and the one James country just look nothing like a period sac coat, though again, its hard to tell when its just laid out flat. Its hard to pick things from a tiny, bad, picture. Anyone have a photo of themselves modeling their sack coats (along with a note of where it came from)?
Its hard to say why but a lot of stuff I see just does not look correct. The fabrics are wrong (wrong material, wrong patters, to thick etc.), the cut is wrong (more like a modern sport coat etc), or they just don't hang right. In part I think its because we are far too hung up on cleanliness (my old runnin partner used to refer to modern people as "the great washed") and as a result when we wear period clothing we just look wrong. The clothes are too clean and they simply don't appear lived in, they don't fit us like we have been wearing them everyday for weeks. During the period most people didn't own a lot of clothes and they did not wash them much (just the undershirts, cuffs and collars in most cases). As a result, clothing was lived in more and it looked different. As I say, its a hard thing to quantify but its real. Something that is properly made looks real, something that is not looks like a costume.
I'm not criticizing anyone or their stuff, I'm just on a quest for the best sack coat I can find, something that looks right.