Mai Gidah Corduroy Worker Style Jacket with Button-Closure and Pockets

Corduroy is a pile cloth, which means what you see is the top of the cords and the shadow in the channel between them, and almost all corduroy is one color doing both jobs. This one is two. Black and white, running wale by wale, and at anything past arm’s length the eye stops resolving them separately and reads a single moving gray instead. The color is called TV-Static. The cut is workwear, with a large collar taken past the proportion a work jacket usually gets, and the cloth is substantial enough to hold that collar standing rather than let it fold flat under its own weight. Ninety-five percent cotton with five percent elastane, which is the amount that lets a stiff pile cloth bend at the elbow without the pile crushing into a permanent line. Made in the Netherlands.

Why we selected it

Workwear is the most copied category there is, and the copies are all about the shape. This one changes the cloth instead, which is much harder and much less obvious, and the collar is the only liberty it takes with the pattern.

Mai-Gidah tends to take a familiar garment and move one thing a long way, and on this jacket the one thing is the collar.

Materials and construction

Ninety-five percent cotton and five percent elastane, woven as a corduroy in black and white. Large collar, worker-style cut. Color: TV-Static. Made in the Netherlands.

Fit notes

A work jacket is cut to be worked in, which means room through the chest and the sleeve rather than through the waist. Corduroy has body and does not fall, so it holds the shape it is cut in and it will not drape closer over a day. The elastane means the cloth gives at the elbow and comes back rather than bagging, which is the failure point on a stiff cotton jacket.

Styling

With the Corduroy High-Waisted Trousers, which are cut from the same cloth in the same color, for the version that reads as a suit made out of work clothes. Otherwise break it up: over the White Shirt with Autoportrait, or over the Zip-Through Hoodie when the collar can sit outside a hood.

Care

Corduroy is best cleaned rarely and brushed often, with the brush running along the wale and never across it. The elastane in the blend is what sets the limits: cool water, no tumble dryer, and no hot iron, because heat is what destroys an elastane and the damage does not reverse. Our care guidance covers the rest.

Related pieces

The Zip-Through Hoodie with Contrast Under-Stitching is the same cotton and elastane blend worked as a jersey, and the Sleeveless Jacket with Extruding Pockets is a jacket that carries its detail on the outside. Everything we carry from Mai-Gidah is listed together.