A little over a decade ago, a scarf tried to end my career. A few months into my first fashion magazine job, I had just arrived at the staff holiday party at Manhattan's Boom Boom Room. Unaware that the famously intimidating editor-in-chief was passing by me, I tore off my scarf. Perhaps too zealously. My colleagues frenetically pantomimed "behind you!" A collective inhale seemed to suck the air out of the room. Whether the scarf's cashmere fringe actually displaced a strand of the editor's signature bob or mercifully breezed by, I'll never know.

The memory of this heart-pounding scarf experience was top of mind when I signed on to (cautiously) test drive one of this season's most potent and tricky outerwear propositions: coats with built-in scarves.