The parking was zip-in, zip-out easy; the malls offered opportunities to minority and immigrant businesses, like restaurants, that couldn’t afford major mall space; and by the mid-1980s there were about 3,000 of them in the state, often built on choice land once occupied by gas stations that had gone belly up.

"I said, 'It's all about zip-in and zip-out,'" he recalled.

Mr. Sekas said that he also gets requests for hooded jackets and zip-out trench liners, even though fur restyling is not cheap.

It comes with a magnetized pouch for wipes and a paisley-print, zip-out changing pad.

It is not a fashionable trench coat — no belt — but a black, shapeless shift with a shirt-style collar, five buttons and a zip-out lining in fuzzy gray acrylic.