Lemaire Short Puffer Blouson

Most puffers are shaped by their filling and not much else, which is why so many of them look alike. The difference here is that this one is cut as a blouson first and quilted second. A blouson is defined by what happens at the hem: it is gathered in, so the body of the garment blouses outward above it and the volume is deliberately collected at the chest instead of hanging straight down. Applied to a puffer, that turns the padding from a shapeless mass into a controlled one, and it keeps the garment short, which is the other half of the idea. A short puffer ends at the hip and leaves the leg line uninterrupted, where a long one cuts a person in half. The shell is 59% cotton and 41% polyamide, which is an unusual choice and a deliberate one: most technical outerwear is entirely synthetic for the weather resistance, and cutting the polyamide with a majority of cotton gives up a little of that in exchange for a matte, dry, textile hand instead of the papery sheen a pure nylon shell has. Espresso is a deep warm brown, and brown is the colour that most reliably stops a puffer looking like sportswear.

Why we selected it

It is a puffer that does not look like a puffer, and the cotton-majority shell is why: it reads as cloth rather than as technical kit. The short blouson cut is the more flattering of the two puffer lengths.

Taking a garment defined by its function and re-cutting it so that function is no longer the first thing you see is a familiar Lemaire operation.

Materials and construction

Shell of 59% cotton and 41% polyamide, lined in cotton. Made in Tunisia, in espresso. We do not hold the fill. A padded garment is three materials rather than two: a shell, a lining, and whatever is quilted between them. The fill is the one that decides most of how such a garment behaves, how warm it is, how it recovers from being packed, and how it should be cleaned, and it is the one of the three we cannot name.

Fit notes

Short, ending around the hip, and bloused at the hem so the volume gathers above the waist rather than hanging straight. A padded garment always fits closer than its unpadded equivalent once the fill compresses, so it is worth trying with what you would actually wear underneath. We do not hold measurements, and there is no Lemaire size chart on this site.

Styling

Short volume on top wants a long clean line below, so a straight or wide trouser rather than anything cropped. Espresso goes with the brown and neutral end of the collection and is much less obviously outerwear than a black puffer.

Care

On this garment we would rather you read the label than take a general instruction from us, and the reason is specific. A down-filled coat and a synthetic-filled coat are washed, dried, and stored differently, they recover from wetting differently, and we do not know which this is. Until you have read it, treat it conservatively: no home washing, air it rather than cleaning it, and hang it with room around it so the fill is not compressed. Our fabric care guide covers cotton and technical cloth and has a section on garments that are more than one material.

Related pieces

The Utility Jacket and the Dispatch Peacoat are the wool outerwear, and the Boxy Jacket is the denim one. Everything we carry from Lemaire is listed together.