Nicholas Daley Zip-Through Shirt Jacket, Navy and Orange Check

Putting a zip on a shirt is a small change that reclassifies the garment entirely. A button placket is a shirt's defining front: it opens gradually, it can be worn partly undone, and it belongs to the same family as every dress shirt ever made. A zip is a jacket's front. It opens all at once or not at all, it has no in-between, and it moves the garment out of shirting and into outerwear without changing a single dimension of it.

Everything else here pulls back the other way. The collar is a point collar, which is the most conventionally shirt-like collar there is. The cloth is a lightweight wool in a navy and orange check, which is shirting weight rather than jacket weight. And there is waxed cotton at the details, which is the house signature and belongs to neither category. The result sits precisely between a shirt and a jacket, which is the position a great deal of the most useful clothing occupies and very little of it is actually designed for.

Orange against navy is a sharper pairing than the turmeric and navy Daley uses elsewhere, and it is worth understanding that these are two different checks rather than two names for the same one.

We took this because a lightweight wool overshirt is the most useful thing a man can own in a climate with a thirty-degree day, and Santa Fe has those most of the year. The zip is what makes it work, because it can be shut properly when the sun goes down.

Nicholas Daley's Japanese production handles his lightest wool cloths, and this shirt jacket is the one that sits closest to being outerwear.

One hundred percent wool. Detail one hundred percent cotton. Made in Japan. Zip-through front, point collar, waxed cotton details. Colours: navy and orange check.

Drafted as an overshirt, so it goes over a shirt or a knit rather than against the skin. A lightweight wool has drape rather than body and will hang close rather than standing away. Take your usual size for wearing over a tee; size up if the Waffle Crew Neck is going underneath all winter.

Over a plain black or ecru tee with the Pleated Trouser in black. Over the Waffle Crew Neck when it turns. Navy and orange is a decided check, so everything else plain, and not next to the tartans.

A lightweight wool wants brushing and airing more than it wants cleaning. Hang it, brush it down after wearing, and clean it only when it genuinely needs it. The waxed details rule out dry cleaning without warning, so tell the cleaner they are there. Our fabric care guidance covers the rest.

The Field Shirt is the yarn-dyed check in cotton. The Military Overshirt and the Lee Shirt are the heavier overshirts, and the Classic Two Pocket Shirt in black the plain corduroy shirt. Everything we carry from Nicholas Daley is listed together.