Down with collars

The collar. Lot of work goes into the collar. Making sure it doesn’t curl or fold up on itself, that it navigates the gristle at the back of the neck, hugs the sides, sits flat when down and curves out when up. Yep: the collar. Big focus all year round, and especially in the past few months.

But the new collarless jacket couldn’t care less. Rejects the lot of it. Goes its own way, no regrets, no looking back. Has no collar. Never has had a collar. And its dismissal of the collar — its indifference to many months toil on cutting table and on bust — is forgiven by the fact it gets by quite alright, thanks all the same, without one. Mostly this is because the collarless jacket is one of those garments as happy doing a job between other garments as it is being on top. Its lack of collar in the former instance allows it to slip easily between other collars, while, when playing outerwear lead, its light construction and collarless aspect come into their own when mercury surges towards double figures.

The collarless jacket this year has half-bellows pockets at the front. Or rather, half-bellows pockets, because, on one side — the side nearest jacket front — they are full-bellows, but at the other side, they are zero-bellows. This is to make room for a side entrance, which, allied to the top-down, under-flap entry, makes the pockets dual-access. It also has cuffs, curved at the ends, which fasten with one large corozo-nut button.

The new collarless jacket is made from corduroy (most obviously) and a complementary cotton-drill (less obviously; this only shows itself when the jacket is unbuttoned and the cotton drill-lined inside-front is seen). Both cloths are exceptionally fine, hard-wearing, get-better-with-age materials, woven by Lancashire’s best and longest-running cotton mill. It is this tried and tested textile tandem — the friendly comfort of cord, the crisp simplicity of drill — that the collarless can now be found online in cinnamon and stone.