One of the key wears in an office wardrobe is to have a nicely fitted black office jacket.
For me there are three key features when choosing a black jacket; the fit, the quality of the fabric and lastly the cut! You can spend an awful amount of money on this kind of piece but if the fit isn’t good it will never look good, no matter how much money you have spent. On the other hand, the better the brand (and the more money you spend) the more likely you will also have a jacket with a good fit!
Having said that about the fit, this is as important when you buy a new jacket as when you look at what you already have in your wardrobe. If you have either lost or gained weight, you have to get the jacket fitted. If you have lost weight bring your jacket to the tailor and ask him/her to fit the jacket, if you gained weight and judge it to be temporary, fine, go with the flow. loose your pounds and your jacket will fit you just nicely again. IF NOT a termporary weight gain, go buy yourself a new jacket! A-too-small-size jacket will only draw the attention to the extra pounds and make you look bigger.
Paying extra will also get you a better quality of the fabric. If you have the choice, please, always go for better quality on the fabric!
How important is the cut? Well it depends on how trendy you want to be. Personally I would say that I normally wear down a black jacket in about three to four seasons, no matter how good the quality is. So every third or fourth year I buy a new one. Having that length on the buying cycle makes your jacket updated but not crazy trendy. My experience is that there’s no such thing as ‘buy it and you will have a timeless piece in your wardrobe’. Clothes wear down AND the preference for the cut changes; long or short, shoulder pads or not, double buttoned or single etc. Normally these trends are not changing from year to year, so no matter what fashion people says, this is a longer cycle and it takes time to be outdated. How updated your black jacket will be perceived is more dependent on how you style it and what you wear together with it.
So when I go out and buy myself a new black jacket, I would think like this:
I look for a nice cut that looks updated and fun, and that will fit my figure. I check out the quality of the fabric; I don’t even try the jackets that are of less quality both in textile and execution of seams.
Try it on; do I look my best? If not, I try to skip it no matter how tempted I’m by whatever reason. It can have the trendiest cut or the best quality, but if the fit isn’t all right the whole thing will be overthrown.
This is my black jacket, season 2013 and onwards.
After everything I have said about the fit, I can’t really put anything out here that is not fitting… It does have a nice fit for me.
What makes this jacket special is that there’s a leather band all around it. It’s all black but the mix of materials and texture makes it interesting. I was actually a little bit hesitant when buying it as I thought it might be too much of a trend to put leather on the jacket. But it has actually worked out nicely in combination with my old black skirts and pants. It should be mentioned that this time around I have chosed to go for a single jacket not buying pants and skirt in the same line. For this choice I was very much influenced by the mix of fabrics that we can see everywhere.
The fabric is surprisingly not wool, it’s smooth and pliable slightly heavier rayon. The brand is Rag and Bone and at the time I bought it the prize was 3.500 SEK / $500.
