Rick Owens JMF Neue Jacket

Tailoring is normally wool for a reason that has nothing to do with taste. Wool has memory. It can be pressed into a shape, steamed back when it loses one, and moulded over a canvas so that the jacket holds a line the wearer is not providing. Silk has none of that. It will not be shaped by pressing, it will not spring back, and it does exactly what the cut and the cloth weight tell it to do. Which means a silk jacket is an honest test of the pattern underneath it: there is no way to correct a bad drawing with heat.

This one is drawn hard. It sits just above the hip, closes double breasted on four buttons, runs slim through the sleeve, and then extends the shoulder well beyond the body, which is the proportion the house has been working on for years. In wool that shoulder would read as construction. In silk it reads as line, because the cloth is doing nothing to help it and it is holding anyway.

It came out of the Hollywood collection, which was a show about spectacle. This is the tailored end of that.

We took it because it is as technically demanding as tailoring gets and it does not look it. A double-breasted silk jacket with an exaggerated shoulder is either very good or immediately wrong, and there is no third result. This one is very good. It is also the piece we would put in front of someone who thinks of this house only as leather and drapery, because it is neither, and it settles the question of whether the tailoring here is serious.

Rick Owens shows tailoring every season alongside the leather, and this is that tailoring at its sharpest and least forgiving.

One hundred percent silk, made in Italy, in black. Double-breasted front with four buttons, slim sleeve, extended shoulder, and a body ending just above the hip.

It fits snug and it is meant to. The shoulder is exaggerated by design, so the width you see is the width intended and sizing up will not read as a fuller jacket, it will read as a longer one, which is the one thing this cut cannot absorb. Silk has almost no give, so allow for what goes underneath: a shirt or a fine knit, nothing thicker. Above the hip is a short jacket, which changes trouser proportion, so try it with what you intend to wear.

With a narrow trouser and nothing competing. A fine knit underneath rather than a shirt if you want the line uninterrupted. This is an evening jacket in everything but name and it does not need help.

Professional cleaning only, and tell the cleaner it is silk before it goes in. Silk marks with water and dulls with heat and friction, so hang it on a shaped hanger, air it after wearing rather than cleaning it on a schedule, and keep it out of direct light in storage, because that is what takes the depth out of black silk. Our care guidance covers the rest.

The Fogpocket Soft Soft Blazer in cotton and the Giacca Soft Soft Blazer in wool flannel sit alongside it, and the F/W 25 Fogpocket Soft Blazer in virgin wool is where the same tailoring goes in a cloth with memory. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.