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).
Of course, with the hood being detachable, the jacket can also be worn without it (the reverse is also true). Without the hood, the jacket takes on a simpler and more relaxed aspect.
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 lighter complement to the dark blue outer. It is a distinguished outer cloth in its own right, but here is happy to take a back-seat. All exposed edges and seams inside the jacket, meanwhile, are bound with mid-blue cotton.
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."