Safari jacket in cavalry twill in khaki drab
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£520.00 — ex VAT
Safari jacket, made in London, with middle-weight (11oz) cotton cavalry twill from a mill in Lancashire, horn buttons from the Cotswolds, and brass buckles from the West Midlands.
Sizing
The safari jacket fits true to size, but true to safari jacket of olden times, has an easy and relaxed fit, so for those between sizes, it's best to go down rather than up. The wooden man here has a chest of 40 and is wearing 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 | 33 | 33¼ | 33½ | 33¾ | 34 |
| Sleeve from centre-back | 33¾ | 34¼ | 34¾ | 35¼ | 35¾ |
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.
The safari jacket is like every safari jacket in what it has, but quite unlike every safari jacket in how it does it. It has four pockets, a belt, a collar of moderate size, and all-round semi-casual aspect, while its length is nothing if not sensible, and just long enough for the belt to have something with which to work.
The jacket has a full collar stand, and the collar on which it stands is cut to sit down, stand up, or be halfway between, in a way that is always confident and convex rather than crumpled and concave. There's a little strap, too, hiding beneath the collar, and which can be buttoned across to close the tie-space.
There are four pockets on the front of the jacket. The chest pockets are built into the seam that runs across the chest, and another seam that runs down the chest has a pleat built into it to give the pockets a little bit of extra room to withstand whatever is put inside them.
The patch pockets lower down, meanwhile, have a bellows strip that likewise imbues them with more capacity — whether animate (e.g. hands) or inanimate.
The belt on the jacket has a buckle at the front, with the usual parade of eyelets, and two sliders at the back, which allow the overall length to be adjusted much like the strap on a bag. At the back also are not one but four pleats, permitting expansion of the jacket when the wearer leans or stretches forward.
The jacket has what's known as a cape shoulder: if you look at the way the jacket is made, you'll see that the top part — the upper body and the top of the sleeves — ring around just like a short cape. It gives a soft shoulder and a sense of easy space and movement much like a raglan sleeve.
The buttons on the jacket are horn, are dark in colour and matte in finish. Being as each is an article hewn from nature, they all look a little different from one to the next, varying slightly in tone and hue and markings.
Of course, most of the buttons on the jacket are hidden when it is fastened, being as it has a neat fly front, with each compartment separated with a stout little bar tack. These redoubtable fellas also adorn all points of wear and potential tear on the jacket, such as the corners of the pockets openings.
The cuffs on the jacket fasten with a single button for a reassuringly fitted grip around the wrist, and with a folded gusset in the sleeve feeding down into it.
With the outside being so eventful, the interior of the jacket is as clean as it is simple, with a neat jetted chest pocket on the left and right sides.
The jacket is fully lined — both the back of the body and the sleeves — with a slinky satin, making donning and undonning it a breeze, and helping to reduce friction with whatever is worn underneath.
Cavalry twill is a strong, durable, mid-weight cotton, rooted in military attire, and characterised by a two-ply twill that lends it a clean and formal drape. This, coupled with the fine, long-staple yarn from which it is woven makes for cloth smart and crisp when new, soft with time, but yet breathable to boot.
Makers of
The jacket is made at an outerwear factory in London: the best, many agree, in the capital. The jacket is cut by the hands of a cutter with some 30 years in the trade, and sewn by one of four seamsters whose meticulousness and pursuit of perfection would be caricature were the end results not always so good.
The cloth is sourced from a mill in Lancashire, in north-west England. Cottons have rolled off its line for nearly a century and a half. Industry-leading methods of weaving, dyeing, and finishing — unimproved in decades — along with steadfast adherence to quality, result in some truly first-rate cloth.
The brass hardware is made by a foundry in the West Midlands, which was founded in the 1800s. It is the last such foundry in an area once heaving with them. Its sand-casting method — which sees 940°c molten brass poured by hand from a crucible into sand-made moulds — is ancient and infallible.
The horn buttons are cut, shaped, and polished by the last horn button-makers in Britain. Relocated from the Midlands to the Cotswolds, they continue a tradition going back to the 18th century. "It is no easy task," claimed William Hutton in 1780, "to enumerate the infinite diversity of buttons made in Birmingham."
