Men's Brown Wool Jacket – Removable Hood with Notch Lapel

I owned a smart jacket, a casual jacket and a rain jacket for years and used none of them enough to justify three. This has replaced two of them outright. There is nothing clever about it, it is a well made wool jacket with a hood you can take off, and that one decision is the whole difference. The only thing I have bought this year I would recomend without qualifying it.

With the hood attached and down it sits over the top of the lapels and bunches slightly at the back of the neck, which is the one place the two ideas do not quite reconcile. It is not ugly and you stop seeing it. If it bothers you the answer is to take the hood off, which takes about ten seconds.

In late autumn light the brown goes a shade richer than it looks indoors, which is when the jacket is at its best. Nice surprise the first time I noticed it.

Took it away for five days with hand luggage and it was the only outer layer I packed. Hood on for the walking about, hood off for the two evenings that needed something better, and it went over the top of the bag rather than taking up room inside. That is the jacket I had been trying to find for three years without knowing how to describe it.

Two on the inside rather than the usual one, and they are both a proper size instead of one real one and one token. Left one takes a wallet, right one takes a passport or a folded paper. Nothing bulges through the wool.

Five pockets and I use all of them, which has never been true of anything else I own. Phone in the chest zip, hands in the two on the sides, wallet in one of the inside ones and a paperback in the other. Nothing shows through the front because the inside ones sit flat against the lining. It has meant I stopped carrying a bag for short trips, and that is not something I expected a jacket to change.

There is a split at the back which on a mid length jacket makes more difference than you would think. You sit down and it opens rather than pulling across your thighs. My last one had no vent and I was forever tugging at it.

Wore it out to dinner with the hood taken off and a dark shirt underneath and it was correct for the evening. The lapel is what does it. Nobody would guess there is a hood in a drawer at home that turns the same jacket into something else entirely.