Hood jacket in copper Ventile canvas
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£300.00 — ex VAT
Four-button jacket with hood, made in London, with rain-proof Ventile cotton-canvas from Lancashire, a lining of wool-merino from Yorkshire, and horn buttons from the Midlands.
Sizing
The coat fits true to size, and thus the mannequin — the most standard 38 in all the world — wears a size S. However, please note that the hood jacket was designed to be worn with nothing much more than a t-shirt or shirt underneath, so is cut fairly slim in the body; if you want a roomier fit, then go one size up.
XS | S | M | L | XL | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
To fit chest | 36 | 38 | 40 | 42 | 44 |
Pit-to-pit | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
Shoulder | 17 | 17½ | 18 | 18½ | 19 |
Sleeve length | 23½ | 23½ | 24 | 24½ | 24½ |
Back length | 26 | 26½ | 26½ | 27 | 27½ |

The jacket is made with Ventile: a cotton of legendary weather-proof capabilities, on contact with which water beads up and rolls right off. It works because it is an extraordinarily tight weave of the finest 2% of the world’s cotton. This particular Ventile is a new, heavy canvas type: at time of writing, a world-first.
The jacket has a large collar, beneath which sits a peaked three-piece hood, which clicks on and off with five brass press-studs (see below-left). There are umpteen ways to arrange the hood, such as fully fastened, with the two-button chin-strap done-up and the collar buttoned across the neck (below-right).
The buttons are made from horn, and are dark tortoiseshell in colour. Each one is slightly different to the next, varying in tone and hue and markings. The seam, which runs all the way around the jacket (see main image) conceals patch-pockets, which can also be accessed from the side (below-left).
The jacket has a half lining of speckled wool-merino, the colour of which is a darker complement to the copper-colour outer. It is a distinguished outer cloth in its own right, but here is happy to take a back-seat. All edges and seams inside the jacket, meanwhile, are bound with mid-grey cotton.
As worn
The gent here is 6'1" and is wearing a size M. His chest size is 38", and there are unconfirmed reports that he is 12 stone.
Makers of
The jacket is made by an outerwear factory in north-east London. It is specialised skill, assembling jackets from thick and heavy cloth. The idea is to make something which truly lasts — all highly durable making techniques, heavy fusing, and turned seams — without the result being stiff or bulky.
Ventile was invented in Manchester in the 1930s. It is a high-performance cloth — being put to use over the years for all manner of high-octane and outdoor pursuits — but is simply an intensely tight weave of natural cotton. Water hits the cotton, cotton swells up, water has nowhere to go: easy.
The wool lining hails from a mill founded in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire in the 1800s. Carding, blending, spinning, and weaving — it all happens on the same premises. This unique arrangement means that the fleece’s change into top-grade cloth could not be more tightly tuned.
The horn buttons were cut, shaped, and polished by the last such factory in Britain (now defunct). It was part of a tradition in the Midlands first linked to the meat industry of the 18th century. "It is no easy task," said William Hutton in 1780, "to enumerate the infinite diversity of buttons made in Birmingham."