Engineered Garments Loiter Jacket

The detail worth buying this jacket for is the collar. Most jackets have a collar that opens, and a few have one that closes, and the difference is not decorative. A collar that buttons fully to the throat seals the one gap that makes an open jacket cold, which is why every working outer garment ever drawn for weather has some version of it: the storm tab on a trench, the throat latch on a field coat, the chin strap on a duffle. What it also does, and this is the part this house is interested in, is change what the garment is. Buttoned open the Loiter reads as a light jacket with a notched revere. Buttoned closed it reads as a chore coat, square and sealed and faintly military.

The cloth is wool serge, and serge is a twill: the weave steps over and up so the surface carries a diagonal rib that reads on both faces rather than only on one. Woven from hard-spun worsted yarn it comes out dense, dry to the hand, and hard-wearing, which is why it clothed armies, schools, and railways for most of two centuries before anybody thought of it as a choice. It has more give than a cotton of the same weight, it takes a crease and lets it go again, and it recovers overnight from a day of sitting, which is the thing wool does that no plant fibre manages.

Three front pockets rather than the four this brand usually applies is the other decision. Four is the workwear default and it makes a grid across the front. Three breaks the symmetry, which is the sort of small deliberate imbalance that runs through the line: the house’s own account of its method is that it strays from perfect design on purpose.

Why we selected it

A jacket that becomes a different garment when you do up the collar is doing more work than a jacket that does not. That is the entire argument, and it is a good one.

Engineered Garments describes its own approach as venturing into conflicting themes and straying from perfect design, and a two-way collar on a three-pocket front is what that looks like in practice.

Materials and construction

One hundred percent wool in a serge, made in the USA. Three front pockets and a collar that buttons fully closed. Colour: Gray.

Fit notes

Cut square through the body and made to be worn open or closed, which means it needs room at the chest to work either way. Size on the shoulder. Wool serge has some give and a great deal of recovery, so it will crease across a day and hang most of it out overnight. A jacket meant to close at the throat has to clear a knit underneath it, so if that is how you will wear it, take the larger of two sizes.

Styling

Open, over the Rounded Collar Shirt with the Andover Pant. Closed, over a heavy crewneck with the FA Pant in olive corduroy, which is the version this jacket was drawn for. Gray wool against olive cotton is the pairing to reach for first.

Care

Brush the surface down after wearing and hang it somewhere with air around it. Clean it when it needs cleaning rather than on a schedule. Keep a hot iron off the face of it, because pressing a worsted twill flat crushes the diagonal rib that makes a serge look like a serge, and what replaces it is a shine that does not come out. Our wool care guidance covers the rest.

Related pieces

The same model in nylon is the Loiter Jacket in olive nylon. The Bedford Jacket in black moleskin and the Shooting Jacket are the two heavier jackets on this pattern of thinking, and the FA Pant in olive corduroy is the trouser. Everything we carry from Engineered Garments is listed together.