Even after an Indian summer, those of us in the northern hemisphere are facing the prospect of spending several months swaddled in winter clothes. And for most of us, it is time to take a cold, critical stare at our coat options. So, we asked two of our esteemed – and opinionated – contributors the same question: if you could wear only one coat between now and next spring, what would it be? A neatly tailored style from The Row, Loro Piana or CELINE HOMME? Or a sportier, technical puffer jacket, at which brands such as Stone Island, Moncler and Balenciaga excel? And can one coat really see you through winter?

There used to be a time when I would count down the days between the end of summer and the start of Big Coat Season. I would count down the hours as we passed from hoodies and shorts into shackets and macs before, eventually, reaching to the back of the wardrobe and pulling out the biggest and puffiest puffer I could find.

Not any more.

There are a number of reasons why I have replaced my winter puffer with more tailored – dare I say more sophisticated – options. On one hand, there is the aesthetic side of it. Where possible, I don’t want to look like someone’s hired security or, worse, the former football manager Mr Arsène Wenger prowling the touchline every time I leave the house. A puffer jacket is always casual, no matter what it is worn with, whereas a tailored coat can be dressed up or down and works just as well when it’s thrown on for the coffee run as it does as if your heading out to dinner in a fancy restaurant.

Then there is the practicality of it. Who needs a puffer jacket?

When the puffer jacket was invented by Mr Eddie Bauer almost a century ago, it was inspired by the hypothermia he suffered on a fishing trip, not because he was a bit chilly on the way to work. This brush with death was fresh in his memory when he was designing the jacket. Practicality and warmth were paramount concerns. In my day-to-day life, however, I am not at risk of hypothermia and I find a puffer too warm. We all know what it’s like on a cold winter’s day, going from outside to inside, getting on and off the Tube, freezing one moment and sweating the next, your big coat constantly half on, half off as you try to cope with the changing temperatures.

This is where the tailored coat has the puffer beat. It is less cumbersome and less likely to make you overheat. And it offers versatility in spades. In the depths of winter, maybe a coat on its own won’t cut it, but it will leave extra room for a chunky knit or even an extra jacket underneath.

My go-to winterwear for the past couple of years has been an Installation coat from the Danish label mfpen. The oversized, understated design is a perfect example of why smarter coats are a sensible solution to the cold weather. If I misjudge the temperature when out and about, I can simply remove a layer and throw it into my bag. There is no need to carry around an unwieldy coat all day just because the weather app was a degree or two out.

A puffer is a battering ram of a jacket, a one-size-fits-all approach to the colder months. Wearing a more tailored jacket – whether it’s a classic wool overcoat or a sleek car coat – is more subtle. If you get the right one, it can almost become a different jacket depending on how wear it, dressed up or dressed down, over a suit, a mid-layer jacket or a cosy sweater. A tailored jacket more than meets most men’s needs and gives you options. Save the puffer for when (if) you really need it.

A tailored coat, you say? Tailored to what, exactly? My winter body, which combines my mother’s hips with my dad’s appalling posture? No thanks. If I’m going to walk the earth in one coat only, I will make mine a down jacket.

Cast your mind back to New York in the early 1990s: a cold and dangerous place bustling with poor, marginalised communities. Hip-hop scenesters, skater boys and club kids. What did they have in common? The puffer, perhaps the coat with the most singularly subcultural appeal of all time. It offered a neat segue from 1980s power dressing into 1990s grunge, but with a street twist that was accessible to all. Admittedly, it took another 30 years for it to reach its current position as undisputed king of coats. In its underloved early-2000s era, the torch for puffer-wearers was bravely carried by Scandinavian tourists, castle enthusiasts and Uniqlo early adopters.

It is not hard to see why. A down jacket is the Swiss Army knife of menswear. There is no weather, occasion or social event it cannot handle. Its practicality is unmatched. Does anything else in your wardrobe offer shelter, protection and somewhere to keep your keys? If it came to it, you could probably sleep on one. When I go to meet my maker, I’d happily have my coffin lined in the comforting folds of my feather-stuffed coat.

The puffer’s trump card is its silhouette. Did Queen Elizabeth I defeat the Spanish armada in a fitted coat? No. While her empire expanded its horizons, she inflated her silhouette. She borrowed a feather from the peacock’s playbook and saw that fashion was a way to communicate superiority and greatness – often literally, in the case of her extravagantly sized clothes. If she were alive today, I have no doubt she would be wearing a ballooning coat from Rick Owens or Balenciaga, the better to command a room.

And really, that’s a lesson we could all learn. When you put on a big coat you become bigger, in every sense. A puffer is a coat that gives you presence and magnitude. A$AP Rocky knows it. Lil Nas X knows it. Even Mr Harry Styles, modern-day king of the tailored silhouette, has been snapped wearing a puffer jacket when he’s off-duty.

Leave the neatly slim silhouette behind. Bigger is better. The proof is in the puffer.