Margaret Howell Raglan Blazer

A conventional blazer is built at the shoulder. The sleeve is set into a scye, the head of it is eased and padded, and the resulting seam is the thing that gives tailoring its line and its formality. A raglan sleeve does away with that seam entirely: the sleeve runs in a single diagonal from the underarm up to the neckline, so there is no join across the top of the arm and nothing holding the shoulder out. What you get is a jacket with a soft, rounded shoulder that follows the body instead of standing on it, and an arm that lifts without the whole garment lifting with it. The construction comes out of coats and rainwear rather than tailoring, which is exactly why putting it on a boxy wool blazer with flap pockets and a button front is interesting. It is a tailored garment built by an untailored method, and the result reads as tailoring that has stopped trying. In one hundred percent wool it holds a line anyway, because the cloth is doing the work the padding usually does.

Why we selected it

We keep looking for jackets a person will actually put on. This is a blazer you can drive in, which is not a sentence you can write about most of them.

Softening tailoring rather than abandoning it is the argument Margaret Howell has been making since the seventies, and the raglan shoulder is the clearest example of it in this line.

Materials and construction

One hundred percent wool, made in Italy. Raglan sleeves, boxy cut, flap pockets, button closure. Color: Covert Ink.

Fit notes

Boxy through the body, so it does not nip at the waist and does not want to. The raglan shoulder runs soft and slightly wide, which means it sits well over a knit and does not pinch when the arm comes forward. There is no shoulder seam to line up, so it forgives a difference between shoulders that a set-in sleeve would show.

Styling

Over the Monogram Shirt with the collar out, or over the Seamless Crew for the plainest version. With the flannel trousers if you want it read as tailoring, with cotton trousers if you do not. Covert Ink is a dark blue-black that behaves like a neutral and can be worn against black without either canceling the other.

Care

Brush it rather than cleaning it, hang it on a broad hanger, and let creases fall out between wearings. Wool wants air more than it wants solvent. Our general care guidance covers the rest.

Related pieces

The Flap Pocket Blazer is wool woven as a Glencheck and closes on two buttons. The Boxy Blazer is linen drafted square through the body, and the Overcoat is a houndstooth wool tweed cut to go over everything. Everything we carry from Margaret Howell is listed together.