Tweedy

Following up from last week, here are some additional pictures of the vintage Brooks Brothers tweed jacket I recently acquired.

The fabric is a traditional black and white weave, but the pattern is slightly less so. Instead of a typical herringbone, this is less regular—I think I have seen this referred to as a "broken bone" pattern, with the longer diagonal sections interspersed with shorter, zigzag sections.

On top of that, there's a windowpane. The horizontal lines are sort of a beige or light tan, but the vertical lines are a bright blue. Taken all together it makes for a very unusual and distinctive pattern. Flecks of other colors are scattered around randomly in the weave, something else I like.

The lapels are 3.5" wide, which is perfect—not too wide, not too narrow. Three-button front rolls very nicely to the center button. Two-button cuffs aren't seen much these days, which affirms my belief that this is at least a few decades old, but there isn't anything to go on in terms of interior labeling that could help narrow it down.

I'm not a big fan of patch pockets, but as long as they have flaps they make perfect sense on a jacket like this one. (Open-top patch pockets are a little too European for my taste.)

I have a beautiful Donegal tweed jacket that I got from Lands' End about 15 years ago, back when they were still offering very nice stuff at very reasonable prices, and it was made in the USA. Unfortunately this jacket no longer fits me, so for at least the past year I have been searching for a suitable replacement. I wanted something very specific, and this was a lucky confluence of color, pattern, fit, and price. The fact that it's vintage is just a bonus.