Nigel Cabourn French Work Jacket – FW

A work jacket has one structural problem to solve, which is that it has to hold a shoulder while being soft enough to work in. Tailoring solves it with canvas and padding. Working clothes solve it with cloth, and this is a cloth solution: ninety percent hemp gives the jacket enough body to stand at the shoulder without anything built in underneath, and the ten percent cotton keeps the hand from being punishing. The result is a jacket that layers like a shirt and sits like outerwear, which is not a combination that a cotton twill of the same weight can produce. It shares its cloth exactly with the French Work Pant, so the two can be worn together as a suit or split and worn apart, and the cloth will age at the same rate in both. Charcoal, and made in Japan.

Why we selected it

The chore jacket is the most copied garment in menswear and most of the copies are in cotton because cotton is cheap to make and easy to sew. This one is in a cloth that changes what the garment does.

Cabourn’s French pieces come from working clothes rather than from military kit, and this is the clearest example of that in the house’s outerwear.

Materials and construction

Ninety percent hemp and ten percent cotton, the same cloth as the French Work Pant. Made in Japan. Color: Charcoal. We do not hold a pocket count, a closure, or a lining for this jacket, and none is described above.

Fit notes

Sizing runs 50 and 52 on the house’s jacket scale. A hemp jacket does not stretch, so allow for what you intend to wear under it rather than assuming the cloth will give. It takes a set at the elbow within a season and keeps it.

Styling

With the French Work Pant in the same cloth for the version the pair was designed as. Over the French Pull-Over Shirt, which is pure hemp and puts three weights of the same fiber together. Under nothing: this is the outer layer.

Care

Cool water, no tumble drying, and press while slightly damp. Hemp shrinks once and then holds. Our care guidance covers linen and hemp in more detail.

Related pieces

The French Work Pant is the same hemp and cotton cloth cut as a trouser, and the Fireman Jacket is hemp and cotton at closer to half and half. Everything we carry from Nigel Cabourn is listed together.