In times like these, you can depend on little else besides the coat on your back. But before you plunk that down payment on a new winter coat, don’t you want to know if it’ll keep you warm when temperatures plummet?Elizabeth McCullough, a professor of textiles at
Currently, companies like The North Face and L.L. Bean specify a temperature rating for their coats—the lowest temperature at which you can be comfortable—but their ratings don’t all follow the same scale. Ratings vary depending on what the manufacturer assumes you are wearing underneath and which body heat model they use. McCullough thinks it would be better to choose a standard model and make sure that the thermal manikins used to test for insulation always wear the same outfit.
