That Timeless British Staple – Paddock Jackets

All pictures by/of Muffy Aldrich

There are no atheists in foxholes. Everyone becomes a meteorologist during a hurricane. We all like Christmas music in the first week of December. And cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. We are all Puritans on January 3rd, burning up with a deep work ethic and resentment of frivolity.

And everyone loves clothes during the first really cool days of Autumn. We layer up. Take out leather bags. Wool feels good again - so light sweaters, woolley socks, and cashmere scarves. Tartans and tattersalls. Shooting gloves.

Autumn clothes are magnificent. And perhaps the crème de la crème genre is the paddock jacket.

This is one of the great sartorial categories, in my opinion. The best paddock jackets are timeless, good looking, practical, comfortable, and often unisex, and allow you to play with interesting fabrics such as Scottish tweed, always a first choice. Especially that glorious check category - gun check/puppytooth/houndstooth/dogtooth. Who doesn’t want a tweed that was woven in the homes of islanders throughout the Outer Hebrides? But the list goes on. Keepers tweed (Why don’t more Americans know about Keepers tweed?). Or a quilted Loden cloth. Or Scottish waxed cotton. They allow you to be a bit overdressed in casual company and a bit underdressed in more formal. (Always my sartorial trick shot.)

And by stretching a budget a bit you can get some of the best. In fact, it is a place not to “cheap out”, as they say. A very safe place to spend that “chit” hanging around since the holidays. Not unlike a high quality leather bag.

This is a category where I certainly don’t need any more. But I always want more.

This one from Stockholm-based Toteme was hugely popular last season, particularly in England, and specifically The Cotswolds (a British place of enormous natural beauty, if a bit overrun with Americans at the moment. Not unlike St. Andrews.). I would consider it, as I generally lean into the oversized, and particularly in Forest and Bark. Desert is a bit too “barn coat” for my taste.

And, of course, they are perfect with tweed caps.

And because it is a magnificent category, it has become a broad category — self-servingly stretched by the industry and others. A large umbrella under which many would include the Barn Coat, or Barn Jacket.

But I am not that wild about the Barn Coats, despite having had them, the lesser version of the Paddock Jacket. They are sturdy and easy to wear, so they’re not all bad. But in my opinion, they just skew too much Americana, too Carhartt, and I am not a big workwear fan. And in every case, I have given them away. Especially when they featured that large and unsightly vertical seam right down the middle of the back. Whoever thought that was a good idea.

On the other extreme of this category, is my 20-ish year old Burberry, which I would never get rid of, despite its past overexposure.