Back to the cashmere coat

I spent some time this morning playing with design for the cashmere coat.  The original design, made back when I couldn’t draft my own, now strikes  me as boring:

I wanted something more daring, more asymmetrical, and yet wearable on the street.

I spent some time draping various collar possibilities, and finally came up on this:

The asymmetric collar is balanced by the single black welt pocket  (I still need to figure out its final location); the other welt pocket will be done in the coat fabric and placed to be as absolutely unnoticeable as possible.  (Adding a second black welt pocket would totally unbalance the design and be visually distracting from the sweep of the collar.  The one black welt pocket is essentially a continuation of the shorter collar line, which adds oomph to the line and also helps balance the design visually.  The other one, if I added it, would clash with the long collar line and unbalance things again.)

I liked this, but felt it lacked tension at the top – some sort of defining line would help.  I tried a strip of coat fabric:

I am not absolutely certain I like the braid trim, but I think it has definite possibilities.  I will mull on this a bit more.