Parkas make everything easier.

Yesterday was one of those gorgeous fall days in NYC when wearing a turtleneck, jeans and loafers are all you need to sit outside at your favorite corner cafe and watch some basic bitch sip on their pumpkin spice latte. However, along with the perfect fall weather, a new sense of urgency hangs in the air. Winter is months away, and I still don’t have a new coat.

In between sipping hot green tea and my awkward attempt at people watching, I had a flashback to those frigid late-winter mornings. Remember those? They seem to be written on ever fall breeze I feel. Some mornings I had to coax myself out of bed with the promise of a chocolate, chocolate chip muffin if I obliged to the thorny task.

Not to sound like my grandfather, but when I was in High School man’s outerwear options felt crazily limited. Didn’t they? Basically we had to select from a puffer, peacoat or topcoat. The peacoat has been my jacket of choice for the past several years and I feel like I’m ready for a change – something to get me excited, or at least less terrified, of winter.

Luckily parkas dominated the Milan’s menswear designers runways at the fall/ winter 2014 menswear shows and is one of this years heaviest outerwear hitters. Belstaff, Calvin Klein Collection, Canali, and Z Zegna all send out technically charmed versions perfect for the cold weathered moments.

But it’s not all about function. Is it ever really?

I’ve noticed many a stylish man dressing down his suits like never before, and no outerwear option is more suitable for a casual update than the parka. And it looks just as good with a crisply tailored suit as it does with jeans.

Parkas got a handsome color injection this season with rich tones—iridescent grays, auburn browns, and forest greens. They also hit up Soul Cycle and are available in slimmer cuts so you will no longer look like the Marshmallow Man strutting down Perry Street.

The look also gives a wispy suggestion of the sixties. Not by way of print or cut, more so as a symbol as seen in newspaper pictures of parka-clad mods during the Bank Holiday riots of the 1960s.

Parkas seem to have it all – finicky precision, sharp taste and charming mod-ish attitude.