Rick Owens Lido Jacket

Double cashmere in a coat is rare. Double cashmere in a jacket is close to perverse, and it is the reason to want this one. The cloth is woven as two layers held by a fine binding thread, then split and turned in at the edges so the garment needs no lining and has two finished faces. In a long coat that buys you drape. In a short jacket it buys you something stranger: a tailored shape with no internal structure at all, holding its line purely because the cloth is thick enough and dense enough to hold it.

That is what "architectural" means here, and it is not a decoration on the word. The jacket stands away from the body in a defined shape, and there is no canvas, no padding, and no lining producing it. Take it off and it keeps the shape. Very few materials will do that, and none of them are comfortable except this one.

The Island Coat in the same cloth is the more obvious purchase and the harder one to live with. This is the version you can wear on an ordinary day. We took it because very few garments anywhere are built so that the material and the silhouette are the same fact, and because the difference between this and a good wool jacket is apparent within about a minute of putting it on.

The house works in double-faced cashmere across its outerwear, and the Lido is where that cloth is tailored short.

One hundred percent double cashmere, made in Italy, in black. Tailored fit, unlined by the nature of the cloth, with the structure carried by the fabric rather than by internal construction. From the F/W 24 collection.

Tailored, which here means cut close through the body and shoulder rather than eased. Because the cloth is thick and unlined, it sits closer than a lined jacket of the same measurement would and it will not compress much over a knit, so allow for a fine layer underneath and no more. Double-faced cashmere does not stretch and does not recover a pulled shape, so the fit you buy is the fit you keep. Try it on before deciding; there is no measurement we can give you that would substitute.

Over a fine knit with a black trouser and nothing else competing. It is the rare jacket that reads as tailoring and as outerwear at once, so it can go over a shirt for an evening or over a sweater in the cold and be correct both times.

Fold or hang it with care, keep it off narrow hangers that mark a shoulder, and brush and air it rather than cleaning it on any schedule. When it does need cleaning, use someone who is told it is unlined double-faced cashmere, because a careless press will flatten it permanently. Our care guidance covers cashmere in more detail.

The Island Coat in double cashmere is the long version of the same cloth, and the Island Coat in wool is the same silhouette in a plainer one. For cashmere in a knit, the Raglan Crewneck. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.