Withnail's Coat & I

He may have boasted tailoring from Hawkes of Savile Row, but Withnail’s coat has a much more complicated history.

It’s easy for depictions of 1960s Britain to be enamoured with an idealised, cartoonish vision of swinging decadence. While no doubt a great swath of British pop culture from the period indulged in colourful happenings – understandably considering how fresh it must have seemed after the first decade or so of the Post-War years and their austerity – the same excuse cannot be given for retrospective dramas set in the decade.

Cultural depictions of the 1960s seemed to split by the end of the 1980s, with some still buying into the groovy colour defined by everything from flower power to Granny Takes a Trip. The other half, in stark contrast, focussed on a faded, bricks-and-mortar version (I think the truth of the decade is likely housed somewhere between the two), and there are few better examples of this than Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I (1987).

Set in 1969, the decade has taken on its toll on the two out-of-work actors at the centre of the story: the upper-class drunk, Withnail (Richard E. Grant), and his paranoid, timid acquaintance, Marwood (Paul McGann). In almost any other film, their world would have been splashed with psychedelic colour; their flat a kaleidoscopic funfair, their lives carefree, and their trips variously sunny and swinging. Instead, the decade has brought them into Dickensian poverty, a decrepit gentility even, while housed in a Camden flat collapsing under the weight of rubbish. Only an accidental holiday to the rain-sodden Lake District offers a glimmer of (false) hope.

No doubt much of the film’s bite comes from Robinson’s own experiences of the decade, but the one aspect where this distinctive and refreshing characteristic is present most in the film is in its costumes. Withnail and Marwood are the most unswinging pair imaginable, in spite of getting smashed and high throughout. Marwood favours a leather coat and some general jumpers and jeans. The really interesting clothing choices are, however, in the more obviously aristocratic Withnail. As Withnail proudly proclaims to the drug dealer Danny (Ralph Brown) when the ominous man notices that Withnail is wearing a suit, “This suit was cut by Hawkes of Savile Row!”

Withnail is one of the great exponents of sprezzatura, the philosophy defined by Italian courtier Baldassare Castiglione in his The Book of the Courtier (1528). As he wrote, his philosophy was “to avoid affectation to the uttermost and as it were a very sharp and dangerous rock; and, to use possibly a new word, to practise in everything a certain ‘nonchalance’ that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort”. The point of Withnail’s outfit is that it looks great yet effortless; unsurprising and natural for such a chaotic character. Each individual item may be in itself (supposedly) high-end, aristocratic and good quality, but the way each part is worn adds to a successful, nonchalant whole.

Withnail doesn’t wear the suit from Hawkes throughout the entirety of the film. When on holiday, and in several segments in London, Withnail actually wears a pair of green corduroy trousers which work perfectly with this philosophy. In fact, the only part of the film where he’s fully dressed up is to visit Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) with the intention of impressing (or perhaps pimping) his way to a few days at the rich man’s holiday cottage in Penrith. One obvious item of clothing, however, accompanies Withnail on all of his travels, even when not wearing much else such as when he covers himself in Deep Heat to keep warm, or when he’s fishing with a shotgun: his coat.

The coat is one of the most famous items of men’s clothing to grace British screens; so distinctive and utterly attached to the character who wears it. If the film really is the ultimate of cult films (a description I’ve always found frustrating and undermining of its real qualities), then Withnail’s coat is the item that ultimately defines it. Withnail’s coat has had an appropriately convoluted and strange life, one far beyond the story of the film itself.

Creating the Coat

Withnail’s coat owes its creation to the film’s costume designer, Andrea Galer. Galer was immersed in the cultural world that Withnail & I sat within as she told me in a lengthy interview. “My journey to that point followed a childhood in Cambridge,” she recounts, “growing up with David Gilmour, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Storm Thorguson. I met Julie Christie when I was twenty years old in Cambridge when she visited her brother, Clive, who was at that time doing a degree at St. John’s College. I moved to London when I was twenty-one, and I built my skills in making and cutting theatrical costumes in Derek West’s workshop in Charlotte Street. I lived in Holland Park which led me to a certain social milieu and to my relationship with Alan Aldridge. His work with The Beatles, Ink Studios and with George [Harrison] setting up HandMade Films were all relevant to being asked to be costume designer on Withnail.”

There’s a lot to explore here, but the first question after this took me on a slight filmic tangent. Galer’s earliest work actually came out of this same social scene, namely working in wardrobe on Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). Though she is credited online as working chiefly on Christie’s costume, I did want to briefly ask about Donald Sutherland’s distinctly tweedy outfit for that film, especially as some of the styling of Sutherland’s heavy coat seem echoed in Withnail’s costume. “Donald’s coat was also of Harris Tweed but that was reflecting his character as an academic man.” As Withnail was far from being academic, I left the point there.

The coat’s real purpose is to give Withnail his dramatic silhouette. It’s imposing, dramatic to the point of Shakespearean, and moves in a way that is highly stylised and arresting. In some ways, the coat expresses Withnail’s own view of himself; elevated beyond his lowly position as a struggling actor. The coat’s most famous scene exemplifies this. As he and Marwood walk back to Crow Crag after being threatened with a dead fish by Jake the Poacher (Michael Elphick) at The Crow & Crown, Withnail rails against the world, mostly in silhouette. “Bastards!” he cries to the heavy Cumbrian skies. “You’ll all suffer! I’ll show the lot of you! I’m going to be a star!” The scene is heightened by the beautiful swaying drape of the coat as it swirls around him like a coterie of dark spirits.

Galer explains how this scene influenced the coat’s development. “The idea behind the Withnail coat evolved from a combination of discussions with Bruce Robinson,” she suggests. “We wanted to create something which was intentionally designed to move like it does in the iconic ‘I want to be as star’ scene. It should almost have a life of its own – as if it’s Withnail’s best friend.” Galer absolutely achieved this, but where exactly did the coat come from? It’s certainly not of the kind that was popular generally in 1960s London.

In fact, Withnail’s outfit as a whole feels a hang-up of the Pre-War gentry, a subtle implication that it may perhaps be the character’s father’s. For reference, here’s a jacket that Hawkes & Co of Savile Row, who Withnail claims made his suit at least, made in the era of the film’s setting. The suit was exhibited under the title of “Rude Boy UK 1960s” at an exhibition in 1994 which further compounds the difference to Withnail’s style. If Withnail’s suit feels contrary to the slimmer proportions, then the coat – beyond the obvious Peacock-ish turn for older, military paraphernalia in a somewhat Post-Modern hat-tip to the past – feels positively taken out of time. What was the thinking behind it?

“It was when I was researching ideas for Withnail’s coat,” Galer continues, “that a friend showed me the Nineteenth-Century frock coat which belonged to her great grandfather who was a member of the Scots Guards. She told me it was exclusively woven for them, so I attempted to get the fabric woven exactly like it. However, there was only six weeks at that stage before we began filming, so my only option was to buy fabric already woven. We ended up using the single width tweed for the Withnail coat which was bought from Liberty’s at that time.”

The fabric plays a huge part in the history of the coat’s revival but more on that later. Suffice to say, there is an obvious military bearing to it which, contrary to the irony of the adaption of military clothing in the 1960s (arguably at the height of anti-war sentiment in the country), clearly signals Withnail’s background as much as his other aristocratic traits. “Withnail and Marwood would be dressed to reflect an elegance,” Galer concludes on this point, “avoiding the ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ look which had evolved in the music business and started in the Kings Road in 1969, albeit not worn by poets, artists or academics.”

For the production of the film, Galer and her team had to make three separate coats in various states of disrepair. “We needed three personally cut and then we broke the fabric down by washing, scrubbing and even greasing the material to give it a well-worn look, hence why the fabric is seen differently in different photos and images.” For reference, the fabric eventually obtained from Liberty’s was a tweed called Heather Brown. This certainly explores the aims and production of the coat, though its story beyond the film would prove equally fruitful for detail.

Withnail at Auction

Withnail’s coat/coats have had as strange a journey outside of the film as they did in the narrative. After the film, according to Galer, many of the costumes found their way to Berman’s costumiers, though imagining anyone else earnestly wearing Withnail’s coat in another, totally different production is mildly amusing, if not absurd. However, this is where the history of the coat becomes incredibly convoluted. Beyond loving the film, it was partly this messy history that drove me to want to write about and research the coat, if only to unwrap it all.

“When I asked if I could produce the coat for the tenth anniversary,” Galer said, “all the costumes had disappeared in Berman’s.” The production of the coat that Galer is still involved in today will be discussed in detail later but Galer initially lost touch with all three of the coats made for the film. They ended up in what is now Angels costumiers, and were still there, albeit lost in their vast warehouse, by the time Galer wanted to remake copies of the coat for the film’s tenth anniversary. Luckily, one of them was eventually found at the costumiers and reproductions were made in 1996/97.

Later in 2000, Richard E. Grant organised a charity auction as part of the “Withnail for Waterford” campaign. On the 7^th of February that year, the film was screened at the Odeon in Leicester Square along with a Q&A with most of the cast and crew, as well as (most importantly) an auction of various paraphernalia connected to the film. The aim was to raise money for the Grant’s former school, the Waterford-Kamhbala School in Swaziland. The event was highly publicised and attended by a wealth of celebrities (the most unusual in my opinion being David Beckham; the event’s Jeff Wode, if you will).

Interestingly, when one of the original coats was sold at the auction, it was suggested as a donation to the charity auction by Galer. “Andrea Galer,” according to Grant’s website, “costume designer from the film Withnail and I recently donated the original coat to the Withnail for Waterford charity.” Perhaps this was part of the continued campaign Galer was running to promote made-to-measure replicas of the coat after the tenth anniversary reproductions.

As famously reported in the newspapers, the coat was eventually won at auction by TV and Radio presenter, Chris Evans. He bought it for a £5000 donation (supposedly egged on by fellow DJ, Danny Baker) and then, aside from buying Marwood’s leather coat as well, bought an appearance from Grant himself for the following week’s episode of the Channel 4 show, TFI Friday.

Evans subsequently wore the coat religiously. The press picked up on his obsession with it from the off, not least because of its eye-catching, dandyish character (though the DJ would usually wear it dressed down).

First, he wore it to the premiere of Danny Boyle’s film, The Beach (2000), with then-partner Melanie Sykes, at The Empire in Leicester Square, over the road from where the auction he bought it was a few days earlier.

Mere days after that was the episode of TFI Friday that Grant appeared on as part of a further donation to his charity. Once again, Evans wore the coat, though shared it for a time on the show with the real Withnail. Then, not long after, Evans wore it on the catwalk of a charity doo in Dublin for Marie Keating Cancer Awareness. After walking said catwalk, he still kept the coat on for the afterparty, sitting in the no doubt very warm tweed while sat next to Anna Friel (in his regular outfit rather than the clothes he was earlier modelling). It’s fair to say that Evans was very fond of the Withnail coat.

Rumours circulated a while ago that Evans had accidently damaged the coat when crashing a quad bike. I’ve yet to find any evidence of this beyond envious rumblings on various cult film forums. However, looking at the photo of the coat in a few paragraphs time with Bruce Robinson, there clearly was some damage to the right arm that looks a little more than the work of ravenous moths. Either way, during the pandemic, and after twenty years of owning the Withnail coat, Evans put it up for auction again. This time, the coat was raising money for Scrubs Glorious Scrubs; a million pound charity auction designed to raise money for making pandemic-essential PPE.

Evans asked permission from Grant (though I’m uncertain as to why as the earlier auction donation was from Galer), but Grant was reunited with the coat once more so that he could sign it. “I called him yesterday to make sure he was OK with my putting it up for another extraordinary cause”, Evans wrote at the time, “and having already heard what we’re up to, gave us his solid platinum blessing to raise as much cash as humanly possible for Scrubs Glorious Scrubs.” The coat was also signed by Paul McGann, Bruce Robinson and other members of the cast, though Grant in particular took to Instagram once more adorned in the coat to raise awareness of the auction (in which other lots included an afternoon’s cake and fine wine with him, Holly Willoughby and Rod Stewart at Fortnum’s).

Equally, the auction meant that, in order to sign the coat, it was also reunited with the film’s original director, Bruce Robinson. A photograph was taken by fashion designer (and son of Laura), Nick Ashley, of Robinson standing next to the coat at an unspecified location. This is where the damage to it is obvious.

This time, the coat sold for over £25,000 and came with a letter of explanation from Galer about the coat’s history. This means that the Withnail coat has technically made over £30,000 for charity over its time, not including Galer’s own work which we’ll come to shortly. One thing to note is that Evans highlighted the unique nature of the coat at the time when, in reality, three were made rather than one. It’s just that two disappeared into the labyrinth of Angels (I’ve had a similar, unsuccessful search for Peter Bowles’ suits there as detailed here; they do not keep records of where they source their vast collection of items). From here on, the coat went into private hands, but that’s not the end of the story. Throughout this history of the Withnail coat, its time at auction has ran in tandem with Galer’s own replica project which has several equally interesting dimensions.

Withnail Replicas

The sale of the Withnail coat evidently brought it back into the public consciousness, even beyond the tenth anniversary recreations. It’s understandable as, considering the era when it went up for auction, similarly long, lavish coats also came back into vogue (I’ve seen several women’s equivalents appear on the catwalks of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano in the period). However, when the tenth anniversary of the film came up, and Galer wanted to recreate coats for a bespoke clientele, there was a problem.

“When I asked if I could produce the coat for the tenth anniversary,” Galer tells me, “all the costumes had disappeared in Berman’s [eventually Angels]. I then discussed with the Harris Tweed Authority the best way to reproduce the original fabric.” This is in reference to the earlier detail in which Galer mentioned that the Heather Brown tweed came from Liberty’s. Obviously, even ten years after and with the precarious state of Harris Tweed production at that point, finding the material to make potential replicas was a problem. It was really thanks to an intervention in the mid-2000s from HRH Prince Charles (as he was then) that Harris Tweed itself didn’t disappear entirely. Galer, however, was ahead of the curve in understanding the danger that Harris Tweed production was in.

“I went on the overnight train from London and visited friends in Aviemore,” Galer recalls. “I then got a coach and ferry to Stornaway to the island, arranged my stay on the island and went to the McKenzie Mill with their design team. We set about recreating that lighter weight Harris Tweed fabric on the double width loom which was then woven to produce the first run of the coats.”

The coats were evidently a success and helped Galer set-up her main flagship store in Belsize Park. In an issue of Vogue in 1997, Grant wore the coat for a photo-shoot to advertise the fact that Galer was starting to make replicas. He even modelled them for Galer’s company. When the genuine one was sold, Grant was also given a replica from Galer according to his own website. These coats also had a distinct advantage over the original: they “don’t smell of deep heat – REG has one.”

Even with Charles’ intervention with Harris Tweed in the 2000s, Galer’s work is still pivotal to the crofters today who specialise in this very particular design and fabric. “Now in 2026, the tweed is commissioned by me and woven on a single width loom on the Isle of Harris to support one of six remaining crofters on the Island. However, they are not given the chance to specify a date that their fabric will be finished which is a huge problem for Withnail orders, for the coat and the historical methods of cloth manufacturing.”

This hasn’t stopped the Withnail coat becoming an incredibly desirable item all the same. Not only does Galer now do them in both single and double-breasted editions (Withnail’s was the former, but the latter look absolutely stunning) and made-to-measure, but various coats have made their way into the public realm. As recently as 2025, actor, writer and member of the League of Gentlemen, Reece Shearsmith had a Withnail coat made for him by Galer. He had it made as an outfit for his appearance on the television show, Taskmaster, and no doubt kept it.

Shearsmith bought the coat after it clicked that the one he planned to wear for the show bore a resemblance to Withnail’s. “I looked online,” he told viewers in a short film, “and found the website of the lady that designed the coat. Andrea Galer, she’s called. I went and started having lots of costume fittings, and she made me another outfit. This is the exact design of the Withnail coat. It’s not practical in any way, as I’ve discovered, but nevertheless, it looks nice and I’ve got the coat, so mission accomplished.” The actor is one of a number of people who now exclusively have a Withnail coat, with Galer being very particular about who gets to have one made. Shearsmith evidently loved it as he wore it in the series, in the photo-shoot for the series and the promotion of the series.

“The current batch woven [of the tweed] is for Withnail fans who have ordered a coat”, Galer concludes. “This provides a promotion campaign where I link the work of the traditional craftsperson to the cult film, and to what has become the most famous coat in the history of entertainment.” Indeed, it’s almost surreal to see images of young models wearing the coat today as adverts for the service that Galer provides.

So, if next winter you’re going on holiday by mistake and may possibly face being threatened with a dead fish, there’s only one coat required for such a perilous scenario.

Andrea Galer’s work can be found at www.andrea-galer.co.uk