Always a Pleasure: A Guide to our Chore Jackets

The chore jacket has been the preserve of the hard-working for over two centuries, and while nowadays the most likely points to see any serious wear are the elbows from leaning on the bar, the chore jacket has endured and transformed from its utilitarian past as workwear to a staple icon of menswear.

Alongside our range of relaxed tailoring, prized Oxford shirts and exquisitely printed silk accessories, one of the first things we wanted to put our design principles to was the humble chore jacket.

While in the years since, the chore has cemented itself firmly within the menswear zeitgeist, we feel that ours, with its flat, raw seams, triple stitching and distinctive five-pocket design, a feature inspired by denim and carried over to our tailored jackets and blazers, is the consummate model, as tough and comfortable as possible.

Where our Games family of tailoring is inspired by 20th century sportswear tailoring, our chore jackets take their cues firmly from late 1800s French workwear. True to their vintage forebears, our chore jackets benefit from a casual, boxy fit, emphatically not slimmed down like their modern counterparts. Workwear is no good if you can’t actually do any work in it, so alongside a roomy cut the chore features rollable sleeves, a standing collar and a surfeit of pockets.

The Five-Pocket Chore Jacket is so named because it is a natural counterpart to our Five-Pocket Trousers, and though many examples feature the workwear-inflected five pocket structure (including our distinctive peeking hip pocket) some feature more; the Donkey variant (a beefed up version) features button flap hip pockets, while the Artist's chore employs a palette shaped chest pocket perfect for popping a paintbrush in. 

Our original chore jackets were made in respect to the original bleu de travail jackets designed in 1844 by Adolphe Lafont, though where the first were constructed from moleskin, we opted for a less fustian, but equally hardwearing fabric - a garment-dyed cotton canvas.

We have since wrapped our chore jacket in a variety of fabrics, ranging from Japanese selvedge corduroy, storied Casentino wool, linen, towel, Italian ‘crosta’ suede, and of course, denim, all cloths with the requisite texture and gravitas that are destined to only improve with age and wear.

At one point, the chore jacket was synonymous with drudgery and toil, today it is an off-duty and simple way to elevate an outfit, pairing as well with denim (without resembling a Canadian tuxedo) as with chinos or corduroys.

For the days where a tailored jacket feels too formal, but anything else feels unfinished, the chore jacket more than meets the mark.

SHOP CHORE JACKETS