"Checks, Please!" (McCall Fashion Book, Autumn 1941)

 If McCall Fashion Book can be believed, the "must-have" fabrics for coats in 1941 were plaids.  Every coat listed in its Autumn issue was illustrated in a plaid version, often with a caption pointing out how suitable plaids would be for making it up.

To modern eyes, these coats appear decidedly formal.  The writers of 1941 spent a lot of ink telling us how casual they were.  This, more than anything, tells us how standards have changed since then.

Shoulders were inevitably "well-padded", though "rounded"!

CLOTH OR FUR CLOTH
The casual coats all have an excessively casual appearance this season.  The nth degree of casualness.  They are bulky-looking, with wide sleeves, deep armholes, huge pockets.  Like all of them, this coat has the look of slipping easily over anything—dress, jacket or suit.  It has the new smooth shoulder, well padded even though rounded.

UNBUTTONED CAMPUS COAT
Another excessively casual coat for giant plaids, pigmy ones, or plain colors.  Slightly more restrained in its great-coat lines than the foregoing deep-armhole coats.  It's boxy, but it can be drawn in at the waist by a belt.  And it can be warmly buttoned up, but it probably won't be as the young people, who have taken this coat to their bosoms, like to wear it flying open.

GIANT PLAIDS
It's a great year for great plaids, any size is all right up to twelve inches.  The illustration shows how beautifully this coat takes to them.  Boxy at front, with a slight swing at back.  All the casual coats this year have this big, bulky, great-coat air, in spite of the new smooth shoulder.  It's padded, of course.  There is less work to this coat than any other presented to date, and it is as smart as any.

BACK GATHERED
College girls, if you are not committed to something else for campus wear, shift immediately to this.  It's a last minute—last second!—casual coat, the swaggerest in seasons.  It can button up warmly, but you will never wear it that way.  It's slated to fly open in all weather, held together only by hands jammed in pockets. It's back-gathered, back-belted, the belt mannishly low.

 COLLEGE "BEST" COAT
The new fall version of the classic reefer—the smartest "best" coat a college girl can wear.  In the shoulder and the neckline lie the difference between this reefer and those of other seasons.  Here is the new out-on-the-shoulder line, broad, smooth, rounded.  And the neck opens up into sharp little points.  Wear the buttons right out in the open or hide them under the fly flap.