Engineered Garments Trucker Jacket

Ten percent linen sounds like nothing and changes everything about how a cotton reads. Cotton fibre is smooth, uniform, and even in diameter, which is why a plain cotton cloth returns light evenly and can look slightly dead in a flat colour. Linen is the opposite: it is a bast fibre pulled from the stem of the plant rather than a seed hair, so it comes off in irregular lengths and thicknesses and carries slubs along its length that no amount of spinning removes. Blend a little into a cotton and the slubs scatter through the weave, catching light unevenly and giving the surface a broken, textured face. It also stiffens the hand slightly and makes the cloth cooler, because linen conducts heat away faster than almost anything else that can be woven.

The trucker jacket is the most familiar shape in casual outerwear and it is normally made in denim, which is where all of its associations live. Cut in a khaki cotton-linen it keeps the silhouette, the short boxy body and the buttoned front, and loses the reference entirely. What is left is a jacket that ends at the waist and layers under a coat, which is what the shape was actually good at before it became a costume.

Why we selected it

The short jacket that stops at the waist is the most useful layer most people do not own, and it should not have to be denim. This is that garment in a summer cloth.

Materials and construction

Ninety percent cotton, ten percent linen, made in the USA. Colour: Khaki.

Fit notes

The trucker shape is short in the body and square through the chest, so it sits at or just below the waist and layers under a longer coat without bunching. A cotton-linen blend has slightly less give than a pure cotton and will soften considerably over a season. Size on the shoulder.

Styling

Over the Work Shirt in natural with the Painter Pant in olive. Over a plain tee with the RF Trousers. Khaki against olive and khaki against indigo are the two obvious readings and both are right.

Care

Wash cool and hang to dry. This is a two-fibre cloth, so treat it as the more delicate of the two would want, and press damp rather than hot if you press it at all. It will crease from the linen and soften across a season. Our care guidance for mixed cloths covers the rest.

Related pieces

The RF Trousers are cut from the same cotton and linen cloth, and so is the Painter Pant in olive. The Bedford Jacket in olive cotton ripstop is the lighter jacket alongside it, and the Work Shirt in natural is the shirt. There is more on the house on the Engineered Garments designer page. Everything we carry from Engineered Garments is listed together.