There's Something About Suede

Caramel Heavyweight Suede A-2 Bomber Jacket

There's something a bit special about suede. The onomatopoeic name, that combination of decadence and durability, the timeless Americana connotations. John Voight sauntering through a decrepit vision of old New York in Midnight Cowboy flanked by an equally decrepit Dustin Hoffman. Actual cowboys drifting down lonely desert roads. A fabric that enraptured Elvis (no one's sung about blue canvas shoes have they?). It's a material that makes people lower their voices and say: "Is that... suede?" before reaching out to touch the supple shoulder of a jacket with a certain reverence. "Yes it is suede," you might say in response. "It is suede."

All of this is to say that, here at Drake's, we like suede a lot. It's the thinking man's leather with a luxurious handfeel. There aren't too many materials that age like a good Mourvèdre, one that fits better and feels softer the more use it gets. As our friend and contributor Tony Sylvester put it in a previous article when comparing suede to regular leather. "In a leather jacket, one can feel like a cartoon drawing coloured in with a sharpie, all detail and subtlety lost in a uniform tone. And yet, hide is an ideal material for jacketing. Hardwearing and prone to improvement with age, no one has come up with a better natural defence to the elements: animal skin is the original outerwear."

After the recent success of our suede overshirt, we return to soft hide outerwear with a handful of new styles. There's the heavyweight five-pocket chore coat that takes the endlessly useful and wearable template of the classic worker jacket, but with added suede. A heavyweight A-2 bomber jacket in caramel suede, based on a flight bomber. Hewn from the same 'crosta' leather as the chore, it has a flapped chest pocket, handwarmer pockets, Swiss gold-plated hardware and genuine enamel snap enclosures. The high water mark of high altitude outerwear.

Then there's the suede trucker in a classic cropped style. While the skin of the jacket is superlative, it's the inside that really sets it apart. A wool tartan patchwork lining adding a burst of colour to the natural, earthy tone of the jacket's outer. 

So there we have it, a glut of new and luxurious outerwear. Hopefully it's enought to *per-suede you...

*Sorry, I had to do it. It was an open goal. You'd have done the same thing. 

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