Lemaire Boxy Jacket

The denim jacket is so familiar that the only way to make an interesting one is to change its proportions, and that is what has been done here. The traditional trucker jacket is cut close and short with a fitted waist band, shaped by decades of being worn as a work garment over a shirt. This one is boxy, squared through the body with the waist suppression taken out, and slightly cropped, so it sits higher and wider than the original. The effect is to turn a garment that reads as fitted workwear into one that reads as a shape, and it is the same operation Lemaire performs on the tweed jacket and the peacoat in this collection. The workwear detailing is kept rather than stylised: the pockets, the plackets, and the seams are where a work jacket puts them. Black denim rather than indigo is the other decision worth noting, since it removes the fading and the wear patterns that indigo is prized for and leaves a flatter, quieter, more graphic garment. Unisex, which on a boxy cut is an honest description rather than a marketing one, because a square jacket with no waist is genuinely not drafted to either body.

A black denim jacket cut square is a much more useful thing than another indigo trucker, and the cropped, boxy proportion is what makes it work as a layer over rather than as a shirt substitute.

Lemaire re-cuts familiar workwear rather than restyling it, and this is that applied to the most familiar garment of all.

100% cotton denim, made in Morocco, in black. Workwear detailing with a slightly cropped, boxy fit. Unisex.

Boxy and slightly cropped, so it sits wider and higher than a traditional denim jacket and layers over a shirt or a light knit rather than under a coat. Being unisex and square, it is sized by the shoulder and the overall volume rather than by the waist. We do not hold measurements, and there is no Lemaire size chart on this site.

A cropped square jacket wants a high waist or a long line below it, and it is unbalanced over something equally cropped. Black denim is the version that goes with tailoring, which indigo does not.

Black denim's real enemy is washing, which lifts the dye and greys the cloth faster than wear does. Wash it rarely, cold, inside out, and let it dry away from direct sun. Our fabric care guide has a section on denim.

In denim, the Twisted Workwear Pants and the Twisted Belted Pant. The Utility Jacket is the wool outer cut on similar lines. Everything we carry from Lemaire is listed together.