A Good Coat Is Hard to Find

Fi Cotter Craig, a television producer in Britain, was scrolling through Instagram one day when she was struck by a photo. “I saw my friend wearing a jacket that I actually thought I would kill her for,” Ms. Cotter Craig said. “Rather than kill her, I rang her up and said, ‘Where did you get that jacket?’”

Chloe Shattock, who lives in Amsterdam and works in marketing for Nike, envied her husband’s new blue chore coat and poached it for herself. “The color was so iconic and beautiful,” Ms. Shattock said. “Every time you wear it, it gets a little softer in places and fits better.”

Ethan Cannon, a divinity student in St. Louis, was pulling into a restaurant parking lot one rainy night when he was stopped by the attendant. “He’s standing in the rain, holding up traffic,” Mr. Cannon recalled. “First thing he said was, ‘Where did you get that jacket?’”

The maker of all three coats is Paynter Jacket Co., a small British label run by Becky Okell and Huw Thomas, a married couple who take an unusual approach to their business.