The Jacket Rotation

Clothes Line Saga 007

Welcome back to Clothes Line Saga, a series devoted to fit pics and associated commentary.

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I wore this on Friday, March 13th.

I went out to Oakland with my wife for a belated birthday celebration for her friend, so I wanted to be put-together. The weather called for a solid top layer, but nothing too heavy. We were planning to do karaoke too, which meant any jacket I wore would inevitably be coming off as soon as I cued up Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger,” my go-to song.

I faced a specific set of circumstances, in other words, which called for a specific piece of clothing. Fortunately, I could turn to my jacket rotation.

At this point in my life, putting on clothes is one of the most enjoyable parts of my day. It’s a respite, an utterly low-stakes ritual that allows me to devote time and energy to something that makes me happy. In a world engineered to produce outrage and anxiety and bleak resignation, that’s not nothing. Some people pull espresso shots or solve crossword puzzles; I get dressed.

Think of it like a little brain teaser, even an algebra problem.

(4x + 7) ÷ 3 = 5

You’ve got a couple known factors: time, location, occasion. Those are your constants. Maybe you’ve got a coefficient too, a multiplier that needs to be taken into account—the weather, for instance. And then you’ve got the variable, your clothes. That’s all it really comes down to: solve for x.

Still, things can get tricky. Unless you’re wearing overalls or a jumpsuit (which I’ve been known to do), an ensemble isn’t composed of just one value. Pants, shirts, shoes, hats—all these pieces have values of their own. They interact with each other, and they must be taken into account accordingly. They are complexifiers, and they make the equation more difficult to solve. Usually, your algebra problem ends up looking something like this:

((4x + 7) - y(6 + (2z))) ÷ 3 = 5

In such cases, it helps to have known quantities, predictable values that help eliminate guesswork or uncertainty. The more constants you have, the easier the problem is to solve. Which brings me back to the jacket rotation.

These days, my wardrobe is coherent enough that I have a good idea of the colors and textures I’m most likely to wear any given day: blue shirts (whether denim, chambray, or oxford cloth), brown pants (whether khakis, cords, or carpenters), black or brown shoes (whether leather or synthetic). I also have a general sense of the shapes of these items and the way they fit on my body—shirts are typically loose and boxy, pants are high on the waist and wide through the thigh. I know what I look like, basically.

What this all means is that certain jackets are likely to complement most of my looks. They are constants, rather than variables, and they make the algebra equation simpler. These are the pieces in my jacket rotation.

The jacket I wore that Friday night is a Swoop Jacket from Henry’s. It’s probably my most-worn piece since I bought it late last year (as it should be, given the price). Round shoulders, voluminous body, and a little bit cropped, it seems to work in just about any context, unifying three primary themes of my wardrobe: workwear, military surplus, and ~designer~ minimalism. A true jack-of-all-trades piece.

I paired it with a ratty old denim shirt, my Orslow Super Dads, and, just for kicks, a stupid-looking pair of hikers. We didn’t end up doing karaoke (the spot was full-up for the night), but I would’ve been well-prepared if we had.

The night before, I went out to catch a show at the Fillmore. Dressing for gigs can be tricky: you need to keep yourself cool in cramped, crowded spaces, but you also need to put together something more than jeans and a t-shirt (I do, anyways). On top of that, you’re going to be surrounded by hundreds of dancing/chatting/drinking people, so you need to be prepared for spilled drinks, stomped feet, and other sundry intrusions on your personal space. The rock club is not the place for the $80 suit.

With this in mind, I turned to the rotation again, this time for a vintage Polo Harrington. Thin, baggy, and 100% synthetic, it’s the ideal jacket for a Thursday night gig—warm enough outdoors, cool enough indoors. On top of that, it’s plain as can be. Many pieces say something, whether through patterns, textures, or labels. This jacket says nothing. It’s a silent garment. Sometimes that’s exactly what I want.

I wore it with an outrageously striped vintage Polo OCBD (sometimes I like going Polo-on-Polo, the same way I do denim-on-denim) and the Orslows. Down below, I laced up a pair of Wallabees. They’re a great concert-going shoe. Soles are thick and cushy, giving you an extra inch or two to peep the stage over heads, and the silhouette is charmingly clunky.

The night before that, I went out for dinner with friends. We hit HK Lounge Bistro in SoMa, a tiny little room tucked into the corner of a new-build apartment building on Folsom St. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but it turned out to be the best Chinese I’ve had in recent memory: tender char siu, perfect shumai, coffee glazed ribs served with a dollop of whipped cream, and a wildly rich thousand layer egg yolk cake for dessert. Highly recommended next time you’re in downtown San Francisco.

And you better believe I went to the rotation—this time for a piece from Lemaire, which they simply call their Boxy Jacket. A cross between a trucker and a French chore coat, it somehow looks like neither while offering the best of both: the cropped, square shape of the former, and the generous pockets of the latter. Dig the lapels, which nod in the direction of tailoring without going any further. Another investment piece to be sure—but hell, that’s why it’s in the rotation.

I paired it with a ratty old workshirt I picked up on eBay for $15, the Orslows (sensing a theme?), and Paraboot Michaels, for some double French fried bon vivant type-shit.

So it was a good week: dinner with the homies, a show, and a Friday night in Oakland. I was ready to chill by the time the weekend rolled around, but something struck me first thing Saturday morning, so I hopped in the car and zipped downtown to pick up a grip of bagels from the recently-opened Loveski (the nutritional yeast bagel is great, especially with a nice schmear of their fermented onion cream cheese). This last little outing gave me a chance to hit for the cycle with the final jacket in the rotation.

Someday I’ll write about my Barbour in greater detail, but for now, suffice it to say that it’s been around the world with me over the past dozen years and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s the ultimate constant: the longest-serving piece in my wardrobe, something I never tire of wearing. It works great on frigid stormy nights on the streets of various European capitals, and it works just as well with a t-shirt and jeans on a dawning day in San Francisco.

Other jackets will come and go, but not this one.