Men's Charcoal Grey Wool Varsity Jacket

Had a leather one years ago and it took two winters to break in, smelled of itself for months and weighed a ton. This has none of that. It was comfortable the first day, it does not announce itself when you walk into a room, and it weighs almost nothing by comparison. I do not miss the leather one at all.

The side pockets are set on the slant and they are lined with something soft rather than the same cloth, so putting cold hands in them is actually pleasant instead of just being somewhere to put them. They are also deep enough that things do not fall out when you lean forward, which slash pockets often do.

Right for roughly eight degrees down to about three with a jumper underneath, which covers most of autumn and most of spring where I am. Below that I want a proper coat and it does not pretend otherwise. It also does not overheat indoors the way a padded jacket does, so you can keep it on in a pub or a shop without cooking. That range is exactly where I had a gap.

I am forty six and I hesitated over this for about a fortnight on the grounds that a varsity jacket is a young man's thing. It is not, or at least this one is not, and the reason is that everything that would date it has been taken off. My wife likes it and the only person who has commented is my son, who asked where I got it. I have stopped worrying about it.

Ribbed cuffs mean nothing goes up your sleeves, which on a jacket this length matters more than it would on a coat because you are already exposed at the waist. They have not gone loose or baggy after a season either. It is the whole reason the style exists.

I bought it as a thing to wear occasionally and it has quietly become the jacket I wear. Off the hook, out the door, right for most days between September and November and again in the spring. There is nothing clever about it and nothing about it I would change, which after a year of buying things that were nearly right is the whole review.

Two side pockets and nothing else, no chest pocket and nothing on the inside. That is authentic to the style and it is also a real limitation, because everything you carry has to go in the same two pockets your hands want to be in. My phone ends up in my trousers. I would have taken an inside one.