I Inherited A Vintage Coat—And An Incredibly Moving Story

Last January, my mom texted me two pictures of a vintage princess-style coat with a plush fur collar—and an offer. “There is a story behind this garment,” she wrote. She explained that a family friend had dropped off the coat and it was mine if I wanted it, on one condition. “It was owned by a lady named Betty Zyvatkauskas in Wellington [Ont] It belonged to her mother. If you accept it then she wants you to contact her to hear [its] history.”

The coat was stunning: made from luxurious green velvet, nipped in at the waist and finished with a fox-fur collar. It looked like something Ava Gardner, dripping in diamonds, would have worn to a movie premiere in the 1950s, or what the March sisters from Little Women might wear to go skating on a frozen pond.

Of course I was interested. Everyone who loves vintage clothing dreams of finding a handwritten note slipped in a pocket explaining its origins—sometimes the fantasy even comes true—but here was a chance to hear the story from the original source.

My mother, Laurel Slone, has been a dressmaker in Prince Edward County, Ont., for the past 30 years and has a reputation for appreciating historic clothing. Acquaintances often drop by to confer some historic garment found at the back of a closet: a moth-eaten Hudson’s Bay jacket reeking of cigarettes, an orphaned mink coat belonging to someone’s mother-in-law.

But this coat was different. It wasn’t a castoff, showing up unannounced without a backstory. It came with a caveat. What possible secrets could it be holding onto?

I composed a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) alongside some pictures of the coat:

The replies began to roll in, first from friends, then from strangers:

Suddenly, the entire internet—or at least the more than 9,000 people who liked the tweet—were just as invested in the history of the coat as I was. Depending on who you asked, it was either the beginning of a horror movie or the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to anyone.

My mother shared that its previous owner, Betty, was a journalist like me. She had done a lot of travel and food writing—including for Chatelaine—and, alongside her sister, had written a historical cookbook of Shakespearean foods. This only got more and more fascinating. I was eager to learn about the coat, but the circumstances made me nervous. Would Betty deem me unfit to own such a special coat? I couldn’t quite tell whether this low-grade anxiety was simply the fabrication of an overactive mind or if it had any basis in reality. I simply had no idea what lay ahead.

When I finally mustered the courage to give Betty a call, she seemed delighted to speak with me. The coat had belonged to her mother, Meta Zyvatkauskas (née Kurlinkaite), a refugee who had fled Lithuania during the Second World War. Born in 1927, she was the youngest of seven siblings; her mother had lost three husbands and worked as a midwife. Meta was a teenager when she left home to stay with relatives in Germany to escape the Russian soldiers terrorizing the country. “The last time she saw her mother, she was standing in a field of cabbages waving goodbye,” says Zyvatkauskas.

By the time the war ended, Meta had lost her entire family and had few possessions. “She once told me, “I wore the same clothes every day through the winter of 1944, a shredded wool sweater that my mum had knit for me and a blue skirt that had turned grey with dirt,’” says Zyvatkauskas.

After several months in a displaced persons camp, Meta traveled by boat to Britain, where she trained as a student nurse, and worked at a hospital. She learned to speak English by watching movies. Seeing glamorous movie stars on screen galvanized a lifelong love of fashion. “Gradually, as she got a little bit more money, she wanted to have beautiful things,” says Zyvatkauskas. The coat—in her favourite colour, emerald green—was one of the first items she bought for herself. “It represented luxury and abundance after a time of severe deprivation.” Soon after, she vacationed at a boarding house in Blackpool, and met her husband Leonardas.

Zyvatkauskas described her mother as a glamorous woman. “We have photographs of my mom playing mini golf in a skirt suit and a lace blouse, looking like she’s going to a swanky afternoon tea.”

Eventually, Meta and Leonardas grew tired of living in Britain and experiencing xenophobia, where many people resented the displaced Europeans who had arrived at their doorstep grasping at a chance for a better life. Leonardas wanted to move to Australia and Meta was angling for Canada, so they tossed a coin. Meta won.

By the time the couple arrived in Scarborough, Ont., in 1963, they had three children, and Meta’s glamour girl days were behind her. But she never got rid of the green velvet coat. “She was not one for excessive sentiment; even her wedding dress was dumped into our box of dress-up playthings. But this velvet coat represented something so essential that she never gave up on it.” When she died in 2014, it was still hanging in her closet, carefully stored in a zippered bag.

Zyvatkauskas wore the coat a few times as a teenager, but after her mother’s death she couldn’t seem to let it go. She kept it for almost a decade, perhaps as a way of keeping her mother’s memory alive, before deciding the time was right to pass it on. “Eventually, it felt more appropriate to embody my mother’s spirit of love and kindness by sharing the coat with someone who could enjoy it, rather than leaving it hanging in a closet.”

Meta’s coat now hangs on a cushioned hanger inside of a garbage bag in the hall closet of my Toronto apartment—a rather humble setting, incongruous with its flamboyant charm. It fits me perfectly, and when I put it on, I feel like a celebrity headed to a Hollywood premiere. It is missing several buttons and I have been rather neglectful in my pursuit of finding their replacements. There is something about the coat that seems untouchable; it doesn’t feel like mine to change.

As striking as it is, I have not worn yet worn the coat. I cannot seem to reconcile its beauty and history with the pragmatic life I lead. Despite the wintry countenance of the fur collar, it is not warm. And it doesn’t quite gel with my casual city uniform of jeans and Blundstones. But it means everything to me to have been selected to steward the coat towards its next future owner. I feel an immense sense of responsibility to treat it with tenderness and respect. Someday I too will pass on the coat—perhaps to an incorrigible party girl who would love nothing more than to sacrifice body temperature at the altar of a fabulous winter look.

Meta’s coat is a poignant reminder that clothing is so much more than the fabric we put on our body. Every drape, stitch and fold can hold the saga of a life lived. For better or for worse, clothing has a life of its own and has the power to outlive us.

“In a strange way, I didn’t really appreciate how much the coat meant to me until I gave it away,” says Zyvatkauskas. “It became an exercise in acknowledging the transience of all objects, but the eternal nature of love.”

Many of us feel the need to update our wardrobes every season; we buy things just to feel the shred of dopamine released each time a new package arrives on our doorstep. We’re so divorced from the origins of our clothing that we think of it as disposable. In Meta’s day, people purchased clothing sparsely and truly cared for it. They knew that the more you wear something, the more meaning it acquires.