mens burgundy wool utility jacket

Only four down the front rather than the five or six you usually get, which I noticed straight away and then stopped noticing. They are spaced further apart to cover the same distance and it gives the front a cleaner look with less going on. Works fine done up or open.

He hummed and hawed about whether it was too much for about a week before I ordered it for him anyway, on the grounds that he has spent his entire adult life in navy and something had to change. He wore it once and that was that. It has been on constantly since October, he has had more compliments than in the previous decade combined, and he has stopped saying it was too much.

Bought it in September, worn it more days than not since, and I have already decided that if it ever wears out I am ordering the identical thing rather than looking around. That is not something I have said about a piece of clothing before. Nothing has gone wrong with it, the buttons are all there, the cloth has not thinned anywhere and the colour is where it started.

She looked at it on the screen and said nothing at all, which after thirty years I know is not neutral. When it arrived she said it was better in person and when I wore it out she told me twice that it suited me. I have since learned she has told two of her friends about it. I am counting that as a full reversal and I have not mentioned the eyebrow since.

Everything else in my wardrobe is some version of grey or blue, so this is the single thing with any colour in it and that turns out to be the ideal number. It goes over everything I already have because everything I already have is neutral, and it is the only decision I have to make in the morning. If it were one of three colourful things I would have to think about it.

Wore it to a family thing on Christmas Eve and it was exactly the right amount of effort, which is a hard line to find at that sort of occasion. Smarter than a jumper, nowhere near as much as a suit, and the shade suited the evening without being novelty. My brother in law asked where it came from before we had eaten. It has since become what I wear to anything at that end of the year.

I did not set out to have a signature jacket and now apparently I do. Two people at work have referred to it when describing me to somebody else, which I found out second hand and was mildly horrified by and then quite pleased about. My daughter says I am now the man in the burgundy jacket. There are worse things to be known for and I have decided to lean into it.

The other side of having only four is that the spaces between them are wider, so when it is windy the front opens up between the middle two and you get a draught. Doing the top one up helps. Not a fault exactly, just the consequence of the design and something you only find out wearing it.