Nigel Cabourn Cobbler Jacket

Fifty percent wool, thirty-nine percent hemp, and eleven percent cotton is not a blend anybody arrives at casually, and it is worth saying what each fiber is there to do. Wool at half brings warmth, loft, and the recovery that lets a jacket come back to its shape after being sat in, which is the single property that separates a jacket from a shirt. Hemp at just under forty brings dryness, real strength, and a resistance to the slackening that a pure wool develops at the elbow. Cotton at eleven is doing what a small proportion of cotton usually does in a difficult blend, which is giving the yarn enough regularity to spin cleanly. The visible consequence is the surface: three fibers take dye at three different rates, so a charcoal made this way has depth in it that a single-fiber charcoal cannot have, and it shifts as the light moves rather than sitting flat. The cut is deliberately conventional against all that. Two buttons, flap pockets, and double vents are jacket language rather than workwear language, and putting a tailored shape in a cloth this unusual is the whole argument of the piece. Made in Japan.

A three-fiber cloth is expensive to spin and almost never done unless somebody wanted a specific result. Combined with a genuinely tailored cut, this is the piece in the house's work that goes furthest from where you would expect it to be.

Cabourn's outerwear is the center of the house's work, and this is the one that crosses into tailoring.

Fifty percent wool, thirty-nine percent hemp, and eleven percent cotton. Two-button front, flap pockets, double vents, regular fit. Made in Japan. Color: Charcoal.

Regular fit and a jacket cut, so it goes over a shirt and a light knit without adjustment. Sizing runs 48, 50, and 54 on the house's jacket scale. Double vents allow the jacket to sit properly when seated, which is the practical reason they exist. The wool gives it recovery that the hemp pieces in this house's work do not have, so it will not take a set at the elbow the way a pure hemp jacket does.

Over the British Officer's Shirt in dark green or the 50's Cardigan. With the Farmer Pant in the same charcoal, which reads as a suit without being one, or with the Officer's Pant in beige for the opposite.

The wool governs this jacket, not the hemp, even though the two are close in the blend. Wool felts and shrinks irreversibly when it is agitated in heat, and neither the hemp nor the cotton will forgive that on its behalf, so this is a garment for a specialist cleaner rather than a machine. Brush it rather than washing it, and hang it on a shaped hanger. Our care guidance covers wool in more detail.

The Fireman Jacket is hemp and cotton at closer to half and half, and the French Work Jacket is hemp and cotton cut for work. Everything we carry from Nigel Cabourn is listed together.