Get a head start on the best winter coats If you can shrug off the strangeness of buying your winter wear in summer now is the time to 'invest'. What are peplums actually for? No, me neither. Fashion brims with fripperies that to the casual observer must appear about as functional as an appendix. Perhaps the most dysfunctional aspect of the fashion industry, however, is something far more significant than mere overnight trends for extroverts. Today, on the link below, you have before you the Telegraph Fashion Team's selection of this winter's finest coats. All are corkers, and we hope you like them. But we can only apologise that the prospect of wearing them today - August 21, predicted weather: sultry - must seem ridiculous. Like a tannoy announcer on a delayed train, we must plead that this is due to circumstances beyond our control. Because the logistics of fashion defy logic and sense. SHOP: Top 10 new season coats Supermarkets get it: as soon as there is warm weather, they fill their shelves with dubiously promoted strawberries, Chinese charcoal briquettes and ice-lollies. Fashion, however, absolutely does not get it. You might think that publishing a coats story now seems strange, but we could reasonably have shown you them last week or even - just about - the week before. Because that's when the main fashion retailers in Britain began to fill their rails with new-season winter-wear. The reasons for this are mysterious. Companies will mutter about "trans-seasonal" and "resort" collections that buffer the buyer from the jolt of seeing hot pants one day and boiled wools cloaks the next. The truth is that the customer is not their primary consideration. Instead of worrying about what women might want and when they might reasonably require it, the fashion companies are worried about their opposition. There appears to be a sort of arms race afoot, with all of the stores jostling to get their best items on sale as early in the "season." Which is why, nonsensically, now is probably the very best time to start contemplating a lovely new winter coat. There are ways of rationalising this: for anyone marooned at work, holiday-less, as absent colleagues Instagram azure skies, snapping up a hot winter coat now that you can swan around in long after their tans have faded can provide some satisfaction. Magazines perennially suggest that early coat acquisition can represent an "investment" - but describing spending as an "investment" always seems suspect to me. Better, perhaps, to think of it as fashion future-proofing that also provides future weather-proofing. Either way, though, some of the coats on this page will not be around for long. Many of this winter's most attractive new season clothes will have evaporated by the end of September, when winter itself will have barely begun. To help you navigate these treacherous, shifting retail waters, we have tried to map out a collection of cracking coats that will be become available during the next six weeks or so - and added a stand-out November latecomer for luck. The Browser: New season high street Sometimes to keep up with the oddities of fashion demands a leap of faith. Contemplate the Emporio Armani coat (about to go on sale) pictured here. It has a flatteringly high waist and a dramatically full skirt that reflects current fashion fascinations, yet has something satisfyingly Audrey Hepburn about it. It is made from a snug, structured, but flexible and accommodating fabric that was especially developed in one of Armani's textile facilities. Right now, it probably feels like an odd thing to want. But in three months' time it might seem like an odd thing not to have wanted when it was available. Alternatively, you could wait for fashion to change, rather than allowing it to force you to. Tamara Mellon, formerly of Jimmy Choo, is using her high-heel millions to found a new brand which, she told August's American Vogue, will be about "affordable luxury" - and which will sell items when they are actually needed by the consumer. Although even Mellon's Vogue interrogator seemed disbelieving, it might just happen.