Press & Featured Articles

March 2022, Wall Street Journal

The Article read:

IN THE CLASSIC 1960s film, “Once a Thief,” a character is framed for murder via a simple device: his beloved shearling coat. Knowing that Eddie Pedak (French actor Alain Delon) is always wrapped in his fleece-lined outerwear, his brother’s crooked cronies arrange for a gangster to commit a bloody crime wearing an identical shag. Detectives assume it was Eddie wielding the gun, and chaos ensues in this San Francisco crime caper.

But the jacket is also a force for good. Eddie is an ex-con turned family man who’s trying to leave his shady past behind and, before it embroils him in tragic intrigue, the classic suede, caramel-and-cream coat by British tannery Owen Barry conveys respectability and affluence. Indeed, when Eddie buttons it up over a shirt and tie, he looks like he’s cosplaying as a law partner.

Lately, takes on shearling jackets have appeared in collections from myriad brands including Prada, Loewe, Ralph Lauren Purple Label and U.K. label YMC, whose version (pictured) features horn buttons, taped seams and a patch pocket. This winter, you may have noticed flocks of young urbanites practically baaing at bars with their cloudlike cuffs and woolly popped collars.

The shearling jacket evokes early man, with roots that can be traced to “throwing skins on your back,” said Jim Parker, 35, who designed the Armoury’s bestselling Thief Coat with Owen Barry. Its primitive, macho quality is reinforced by its associations with World War II flight bomber jackets, burly ranch hands and square-jawed idols like Robert Redford, who helped popularize the tan suede style in the 1960s and ’70s. But it’s not that simple. Owing perhaps to its embrace by musicians such as Bob Dylan, a shearling also suggests a bohemian shabbiness even as it maintains a “sense of luxury,” said Jian DeLeon, Nordstrom’s men’s fashion director. “The shearling jacket is quite possibly the only piece of outerwear that can…communicate either ‘I eat caviar’ or ‘I don’t shower every day,’ depending on how it’s worn,” said Mr. DeLeon.