Engineered Garments Bedford Jacket – Olive Cotton Ripstop

Ripstop is a plain weave with a stronger yarn dropped in at regular intervals, usually every few millimetres, so that the cloth carries a faint grid you can see if you hold it to the light. The grid is structural. A tear that starts in a plain weave runs until something stops it, and in ripstop the reinforcing thread is the thing that stops it, which is why the cloth was developed for parachutes and then went everywhere that weight mattered more than durability normally allows. In cotton rather than nylon it stays breathable and takes a dye deeply, and it stays light. A ripstop jacket weighs a fraction of what a duck canvas one does and gives up less than you would expect.

That is the argument for cutting the Bedford in it. The model is the house's calling card, a sports coat with the tailoring subtracted, and it is usually made in something substantial: moleskin, canvas, wool. In cotton ripstop the same boxy body, button front, and four patch pockets become a jacket you can wear in warm weather and pack without ceremony. The grid gives the surface a texture at close range that a plain cotton does not have, and the light hand lets the shape sit differently, closer to a shirt jacket than to outerwear.

The colour

Olive is the colour this house returns to more than any other, and on a ripstop grid it does something specific: the reinforcing threads catch light slightly differently from the ground, so the surface reads as a very fine texture rather than as a flat field. It goes with everything the brand makes, which is close to the definition of an Engineered Garments olive.

We wanted the Bedford in a cloth that works from spring through autumn rather than only in the cold, and ripstop is the one that does it without turning the jacket into a windbreaker. It is the same garment with its weight taken away.

Engineered Garments re-cuts its core models every season in whatever cloth the season is about, which is why the Bedford exists in moleskin, in duck canvas, and in this.

One hundred percent cotton ripstop, made in the USA. Boxy, tailored silhouette with a button-up closure and four patch pockets. Colour: Olive.

Boxy and cut to hang from the shoulder, so size it on the shoulder. Ripstop is light and carries little body, so this version drapes closer than the moleskin or the canvas Bedford and will show what is underneath. It creases readily and shakes most of it out.

Over the Work Shirt in natural with the RF Trousers. Over a white polo with the Sailor Pant. Olive on olive is a legitimate reading in this house and is worth trying before it is dismissed.

Wash cool and hang to dry. Ripstop dries fast without help, and heat is the one thing that will change the hand of the cloth. Our cotton care guidance covers the rest.

The same cloth in red is the Bedford Jacket in red cotton ripstop, and the model in a napped cotton is the Bedford Jacket in black moleskin. The Loiter Jacket in olive nylon carries the same grid in nylon, and the Sailor Pant in olive is the trouser in the same colour. Everything we carry from Engineered Garments is listed together.