Engineer jacket in cotton panama in olive

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£320.00 — ex VAT

Work jacket without a collar, made in London, with a medium-weight (11oz) cotton canvas from Lancashire, and with dark horn buttons — removable ones — from the West Midlands.

Waiting

Sold out almost if not entirely, this, by the looks of it. However, it might very well come back again some day — albeit likely in different cloth, or with a tweak or two, here and there. To be notified as soon as the time comes around, kindly please send word to .

Sizing

The engineer jacket fits true to size, and thus the calico and wooden man here, who is as standard a 40 as ever there was, wears size M.

XS S M L XL
To fit chest 36 38 40 42 44
Pit-to-pit 20½ 21½ 22½ 23½ 24½
Back length 26¾ 27 27¼ 27½ 27¾
Sleeve from centre-back 33¼ 33¾ 34¼ 34¾ 35¼

The method of sleeve construction on the jacket means the shoulders accommodate and drape smoothly over human contours of every shape and size — rendering a shoulder measurement both impossible and irrelevant.

A medium-length work jacket is what this is, in a nutshell, with its most notable feature being the one thing it doesn't have — namely a collar. Rather, the jacket has an open, curved front — which is what you see on old engineer and railroad-type jackets — and a thick placket panel that runs down both sides.
The buttons are horn, and are dark in colour and matte in finish. Being as they're only a step or two from nature, each one is different, in terms of shade and marking. Those at the front are attached through eyelets and a metal ring — "butcher's buttons", sometimes they are called — and are thus removable.
There's a seam that runs across the chest of the engineer jacket, from the placket, into which are tucked two pockets of handily-sized-for-wallets-and-mobiles dimensions. The storage credentials of these pockets are augmented by the pleat which runs perpendicularly from the cross-chest seam.
That pleat, mentioned above, when it reaches the lower half of the jacket, is also the starting point for the large main pockets, which sit at hip-height. Large is the operative word: these pockets wrap around the sides of the jacket, stopping at the seam at the rear, which rests approximately at kidney coordinates.
Curious here is that that seam at the back, where the pocket stops, is also the shoulder seam. It runs up, see, over and around the shoulder. That's how the sleeve is attached. It is a type of "grown-on" sleeve — an arcane genre, where the sleeve, rather than a separate piece, is a seamless extension of the body.
The jacket thus has very soft shoulders, with a shape similar to a one-piece raglan sleeve. The only difference is that there's a seam running over and around the shoulder, following a track similar to what you'd see on the (usually) dropped shoulder on an old-fashioned engineer's jacket.
A lining runs halfway down the inside of the engineer jacket, in two great sweeping curved panels. The rest of the jacket on the inside, meanwhile, is neatly finished with cotton binding (apart from the front panel of the jacket, that is, which is actually fully lined, or rather "fully faced", speaking technically).
With things so eventful on the outside of the jacket, there's one simple jetted pocket on the inside. It's on the right side as worn, and positioned quite low down so is very readily accessible.
The cloth is cotton — a classic canvas weave — of middling weight. It is brushed on both sides, and as such, is very agreeable indeed on skin: soft, warm, and inviting. The brushed finish also gives the cloth a subtle nap, which make it softer on the eye, and thus the jacket has an easy "worn-in" look right from the get-go.

As worn

Him, here, is 38 in the chest, and so the engineer jacket he's chosen to wear is an S.
Same jacket, same man, different colour.

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.
The cloth is supplied by a mill in east Lancashire: in a region of the country which was once red-brick cotton-mill chimneys as far as the eye could see. More or less the last of its kind, the mill has forgotten more about cotton than most will ever know — a fact borne out by the quality of its work.
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."

So they say

Just to let you know, the engineer jacket arrived in the post today and it's lovely. What a nice and solid material, too.

So said a man who bought the engineer jacket in brushed cotton canvas in May 2020.