I Love a Jacket

On Easter Monday I was blearily eating my breakfast and half-watching Lorraine on ITV. The programme was suddenly interrupted by the sombre  breaking news of the death of Pope Francis in the Vatican. Back onto our screens came Richard Madeley and Ranvir Singh who had just finished presenting Good Morning Britain. Ranvir was wearing a masculine-looking black jacket which looked far too big for her but was at least appropriate for such a solemn occasion. Clearly one of the producers had realised that announcing the death of the Pontiff in the pretty floral dress she had worn for the breakfast show would be totally inappropriate.

Which got me thinking about how and why jackets are such an important item of clothing for women in terms of conveying seriousness, authority and gravitas and how and why I still love wearing all kinds of jackets, especially at this time of year.

Jackets were very big in the 1980s when I went back to work after being a stay-at-home mum for twelve years. Very big in every sense of the word. Every woman who wanted to be taken seriously at work or on the public stage would wear a well-cut jacket, so they were ubiquitous. And they also had huge shoulder pads to make the women wearing them feel and appear more powerful and authoritative. As soon as I could afford to, I filled my work wardrobe with smart, tailored trouser suits in sombre colours like black, grey and navy and would never take the jacket off, no matter how hot it was.

That aesthetic is long gone for the vast majority of us, but high profile and serious professional women like Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen and Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni still wear trouser suits much of the time, although I was bemused by Meloni’s choice of a white trouser suit in her recent meeting with the US President in the White House. Not sure what the semiotics of that outfit were, although her body language conveyed an interesting dynamic between the two politicians.

I no longer really need formal jackets but, especially at this in-between time of the year, I do absolutely love a great jacket and have a considerable number in my wardrobe, amassed over time. The great thing is that they don’t really date and now I have lost some weight, they all fit me once more.

I also have a slightly more formal trouser suit and one matching jacket and trouser combo that I enjoy wearing. In recent years I have eschewed the blacks and dark greys of my corporate life, as I no longer feel the need to convey gravitas (!), so I have chosen jackets in those colours that really suit my cool tones in shades of pink, dark and pale blue, cream, and pale grey. See them all below.

Style-wise, alongside my ‘proper’ tailored jackets, I really love casual jeans jackets which work so well both with smart and casual summer trousers and over sleeveless dresses as my arms no longer cut the mustard. In fact jackets may rather brilliantly cover a multitude of sins, and, if you are an extrovert and love bright, bold fabrics, then jackets can be a bit less ‘in your face’ than a dress might be in the same material. As you can see I have one such patterned jacket in blue and white from Culture Vulture.

The other thing that occurred to me as I put the following selection together is that every individual top or bottom would work with everything else as the colours all co-ordinate perfectly. For instance that navy sleeveless Uniqlo dress could be worn with every other jacket without exception. This would potentially give me ten different outfits if I also changed the belt, shoes, bag and earrings. The same goes for the white and denim jeans and so on and on. I’m no mathematician,  but I suspect that there are a huge number of different ‘mix and match’ possibilities making for the perfect ‘capsule wardrobe.’ 

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy my little fashion parade and also admire the purple ceanothus tree in my small garden - the glorious colour doesn’t last but it fills me with joy at this time of year. Now I just have to keep the slugs and snails off my hostas which are also bursting into leaf and look so fresh and tasty I can fully understand why the little blighters find them so irresistible!

Tricia x

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