Top Coat

If you need any proof as to what the standout piece of this resort season is, look no further than Meghan Markle. The actress and soon-to-be royal clinched it with her white Canadian label Line trench coat that she wore at her engagement photo call with Prince Harry.

Once the garb of military officers from WWI when Thomas Burberry created this water-repellent gabardine coat to protect them from wind and rain, the classic trench has over the decades evolved to become both fashion and social statement.

Post-war, the trench coat appeared in Hollywood as the uniform of gruff detectives, gangsters and femme fatales. Thanks to the likes of Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs and Katharine Hepburn (who wore an oversized trench coat in The Iron Petticoat), the trench coat became a veritable symbol of women's emancipation.