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I once had a magic sweater coat. I got it in a clothing swap from an art director. It was bright green and hung to the floor, a tragic acrylic blend. The belt was lost and the armpits pilled, but it was warm and soft and smelled like fresh baked bread. Putting it on was like wearing a security blanket. I worked in it every day for two years until my boyfriend made me throw it out.

The relationship didn't last.

As anyone who has been irrationally attached to pair of disintegrating jeans or battered trainers knows, clothing can offer much more than just protection from the elements and a public projection of taste. Now that the Thanksgiving damage is done and winter is approaching, we are gravitating back to clothing that makes us feel safe. Certain garments actually become our friends and family, offering us a sense of stability, security and home. I call these comfort clothes – the sartorial equivalent of mac 'n' cheese with bacon.

“The first thing I do when I go home is get into my grubby old sweats,” Susie Sheffman, fashion director of Fashion magazine in Toronto, admitted to me on the phone recently. “For me, it's a metaphor for stripping off the day. It makes me feel secure.”

And in these turbulent times, some garments are offering a whole new level of safety. Last week, Japan's Haruyama Trading introduced a suit designed to protect against the H1N1 virus (retail price: $590). The magic suit is coated with titanium dioxide, a compound usually found in toothpaste. According to the designer, the chemical coating sets off a photocatalyst, zapping the deadly virus when light hits the material's fibres. Researchers have been testing the compound as an effective disinfectant as far back as the SARS outbreak in 2003. A novelty? Perhaps. But the Japanese businessmen who lined up to the get the first run in Tokyo might argue that it's a small price to pay for peace of mind.

While some stiletto-loving label slaves might pooh-pooh the idea of comfort clothes, the concept was in fact responsible for revolutionizing the way women dress. This month saw the release of Coco Avant Chanel, a film about the early life and loves of the mother of modern fashion, played to moody Gallic perfection by Audrey Tautou. Brought up in a world of corsets and fluffy hats, the young Coco dispenses with convention, wearing plain simple garments in an effort to feel natural.

“Don't you want to feel comfortable?” she asks her very first client. Chicness is an afterthought. “I gave women a sense of freedom,” Chanel told Harpers Bazaar in 1923. “I gave them back their bodies: bodies that were drenched in sweat, due to fashion's finery, lace, corsets, underclothes, padding.”

Just as Chanel rose to prominence in the twenties and thirties, a time of political and economic uncertainty, so too are comfort clothes in demand today.

“The recession has created a demand for them,” Bronwyn Cosgrave, a Canadian-born, London-based fashion historian, said in an interview this week. “People want clothes that are relaxed, low-key and anonymously chic. Just look at the craze for cardigans – both Daniel Craig sporting them by Tom Ford in the Bond movies and Michelle Obama everywhere else.”

Cosgrave's own comfort clothes are classics “by or inspired by Chanel.” She also loves her mother's old mink coats. “I have two – a black long one and a short jacket. They are like bathrobes, but even better. And they work from dusk till dawn.”

In times of stress (usually involving deadlines), I have been known to wear the same outfit for days at time. My comfort uniform is somewhere between a mink coat and a bathrobe; more important, it's durable. This is one of the benefits of working at home. No one thinks you're having an affair if you turn up at your desk in the same pair of jeans and black jersey top for three days running.

When times are tough, I'm also more likely to subsist on a diet of toasted cheese sandwiches. Who wants to follow a recipe when there are butterflies in your stomach and a buzzing in your head?

But, according to new research, I might be unusual in this regard. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people are actually more likely – not less – to try unfamiliar foods in times of stress. Yes, you heard that right. Apparently stress can make us more adventurous when it comes to food choices. There's no comparable research available for fashion, but I'd wager the consumer trend doesn't extend to clothes.

I don't know about you, but as the temperature drops and days grow shorter, I'm reaching for my old favourites. I even found a new magic sweater coat. It's ragged and stained. It doesn't repel swine flu, but somehow it still makes me feel safe.