Engineered Garments Andover Jacket – Beige Seersucker

Seersucker is not a finish and it is not a crinkle applied after the fact. It is made on the loom by running two sets of warp threads at different tensions, so that the slack set buckles into permanent puckered stripes while the taut set stays flat. That puckering is the whole functional argument for the cloth: it means only part of the fabric ever touches the skin, so air circulates in the gaps and a wet day does not glue the shirt to the back. It also means the cloth cannot be creased, because it is already creased everywhere and has been since it left the loom. The name comes to English from Persian by way of India, shir o shakar, milk and sugar, for the alternation of smooth and rough.

Putting seersucker on the Andover, this house's darted and flap-pocketed tailored model, is a joke with a long history behind it and a serious garment at the end of it. The seersucker suit was the American South's answer to summer formality for a hundred years, and it worked because the cloth let a man wear a jacket in August without misery. What this brand does with it is take that inheritance and cut it on a model with four pockets and no reverence.

Seersucker is the one warm-weather cloth that solves the problem instead of merely tolerating it, and almost nobody cuts it into anything you would want to wear now. This is a jacket, not a costume.

The Andover is Engineered Garments' tailored model, remade each season in whatever cloth the season is about.

One hundred percent cotton seersucker in a stripe, made in the USA. Three-button front closure with flap pockets. Colour: Beige Seersucker.

Darted at the front like the rest of the model, so it follows the chest and wants judging on the shoulder. Seersucker is light and airy and the puckered structure gives the cloth a little natural give, so it moves more easily than a flat cotton of the same weight. It will look rumpled from the first hour, which is the cloth and not the jacket.

Over the Rounded Collar Shirt in white with the Andover Pant in the same seersucker, which is how the cloth was cut. Or over the Polo Shirt with the Sailor Pant in olive, which is the version that does not announce itself.

Wash cool and hang to dry, and do not iron it, because ironing a seersucker flattens the pucker and throws away the reason it exists. It dries fast and needs no help. Our cotton care guidance covers the rest.

The Andover Pant in beige seersucker is cut from the same cloth, as is the Folk Jacket. The model in wool is the Andover Jacket in tropical wool, and the Cagoule Dress is the long seersucker layer. Everything we carry from Engineered Garments is listed together.