Our story
The two things a photograph never tells you
A wool coat is one of the most expensive things you buy for a wardrobe, and one of the easiest to get wrong online, because the two details that decide whether you keep it are exactly the two a photograph cannot carry: how much of it is actually wool, and how it really fits your height and shape.
Every coat photographs the same on a hanger or a model. A coat that is 20% wool and 80% polyester can look identical online to one that is genuinely warm. And a cut styled for a five-foot-eight model drapes very differently on a five-foot-two frame. So the parcel arrives, you try it on, and it’s thin for the price, or it’s the wrong proportion entirely.
That is the problem Lanora London was built around. Not womenswear in general. That one problem.
Why we sell wool coats and nothing else
A wool coat is not an impulse purchase. Nobody buys one on a whim; it sits on a wishlist, gets compared across ten tabs, and is bought once a year at most. You buy a wool coat when the old one is worn out, or when you finally want one that looks like the coats in the shop windows rather than a padded jacket.
It is a considered decision that depends on fabric composition and fit, which is why it is bought carefully, and often returned when it isn’t right.
A shop with thousands of products cannot help you with that. It cannot tell you that this particular coat is a wool blend rather than pure wool, that it comes up small through the shoulders, or that the belt is decorative rather than functional. It doesn’t know, because nobody there has ever tried it on.
We write down what a coat is not
If a coat is a wool blend rather than pure wool, the listing says wool blend, with the percentage of wool stated. If the belt is decorative and doesn’t actually cinch the waist, it says so. If a style runs small, the listing says to size up, even on the pieces where staying quiet would sell more units.
A coat sold as “wool” belongs to customers who paid for wool. We would rather lose the sale than have you find out once you’ve unwrapped it.
A small edit, chosen one at a time
We carry a small, curated edit of wool and wool-blend coats. It is a small number on purpose: it means the composition and measurements on every listing were checked one at a time, by hand, against the supplier’s own specification sheet.
A coat goes on the site only once we can state its fabric composition honestly, its true-to-label sizing, its lining, its closure, and only once the delivery time fits what we promise everyone else. Several styles we liked were dropped for that last reason alone.
The range stays deliberately narrow: long wool coats, wool dress coats, wool trench coats, and short wool coats, in classic colours, at a range of price points depending on how much real wool is in the cloth. Enough to dress for a British winter. Not enough to get lost in.
A word from the founder
I started Lanora London after ordering a “wool coat” online myself and receiving something that felt more like a blanket lining than wool, with a fit that bore no relation to the size chart, and an inbox that stayed empty when I asked about the fabric. That experience is more common than it should be, and it is entirely avoidable: the composition is printed on every supplier’s own label, it simply doesn’t always make it onto the product page.
So Lanora London is built the other way round. I open every supplier listing, check the fabric composition and the size chart against the specification sheet, and write down what I find, including the things that are less convenient to say: that a coat is a wool blend and not pure wool, that a style comes up small, that a “one size” belt won’t suit every waist. If a coat cannot be described accurately, it does not go on the site.
My name is on this page and my phone number is in the footer. If something is wrong with your order, you reach a person, not a form.
Mamadou Yatma Sarr, founder
What that means in practice
Who we are
Lanora London is an independent online shop serving homes across the United Kingdom, founded and run by Mamadou Yatma Sarr, registered in France as an Entrepreneur individuel under SIREN 895 020 964. Prices are shown in pounds.
Email [email protected] · Phone +44 20 3769 1132 · Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00 (GMT). We answer within 24 hours.
Lanora London · Mamadou Yatma Sarr, Entrepreneur individuel · SIREN 895 020 964 · Apt 876, 6 Rue Georges de Porto-Riche, 33310 Lormont, France