Nicholas Daley Stone Jacket

The work jacket is one of the great neutral garments: a square body, patch pockets, a button front, and a shape that has been made in denim, moleskin, canvas, and drill for well over a century without anybody feeling the need to improve it. It is the last place you would expect to find a bespoke bouclé tartan, which is precisely why Daley put one there.

Bouclé is woven from a yarn spun with loops standing out along its length, so the surface is a field of small curls rather than a flat plane. It is a cloth associated with couture jackets and with a certain kind of expensive softness, and putting it on a work jacket pattern is a deliberate category error. The check underneath is turmeric against navy, one of the warmest things Daley draws, and at sixty-five percent wool with a third mohair it has enough lustre to keep the pattern moving rather than sitting flat.

Then waxed cotton at the details, which is the house signature and the thing that stops the jacket tipping over into preciousness. Three materials from three completely different registers, on a garment originally designed for people doing manual work. Every part of that is intentional.

This is the best cloth Daley has had woven on the plainest shape he cuts, and that combination is not common. We also took the same turmeric and navy check in a trouser, which tells you what we thought of the fabric. If you were buying one jacket from this house and did not want the tailoring, we would put you in this.

Nicholas Daley designs his own checks and has them woven in Britain, and the Stone Jacket is where the best of them meets the plainest shape he cuts.

Body sixty-five percent wool, thirty-three percent mohair, and two percent nylon, in a bouclé tartan. Detail one hundred percent waxed cotton. Made in England. Work jacket cut. Colour: turmeric and navy check.

A work jacket cut, so square through the body and drafted to go over a shirt or a knit rather than close to it. A bouclé of this density has real body and will hold its own shape. Take your usual size for wearing over a shirt, or size up if a heavyweight waffle knit is going under it all winter.

Over a plain black or ecru shirt with the Pleated Trouser in black. Over the Waffle Rollneck in chocolate, where the brown sits between the turmeric and the navy. It is the same cloth as the Pleated Trouser in turmeric and navy, and wearing the two together is a decision rather than an outfit.

Brush it and hang it rather than cleaning it on a schedule. The waxed cotton details rule out machine washing and dry cleaning without warning, so tell the cleaner the jacket has wax on it before you leave it, and find one who has handled a bouclé, because a heavy press will flatten the loop surface permanently. Our fabric care guidance covers the rest.

The Pleated Trouser in turmeric and navy is cut from the same cloth, and the Wrap Kilt in turmeric and navy is the wrap in mohair. The Work Cardigan is the turmeric layer, and the Fonte Jacket the tailored jacket. Everything we carry from Nicholas Daley is listed together.