Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming: the intersection between the fashion posse and the cast of Auf Wiedersehn, Pet in the unpredictable Venn diagram that is 2024. Because many of the attendees at fashion month have been dressed in the kind of jackets that Bomber wore to carry bricks around in Düsseldorf. There have been lots on the catwalks for next season too.
Think big — very big — and think, ideally, leather. It is a look that made sense on Pat Roach, for whom the leather and wool donkey jacket was a way of life, but it is harder to get your head around when worn by a willowy influencer type. If I had to go all psychoanalytic on the situation, I would say it is about protection. Who isn’t in the market for some kind of hard shell at the moment?
Whistles’ Clean Bonded leather jacket, almost sold out in brown — it will be restocked in June — but still available in black (£359.20, whistles.com), has been a bestseller for the brand since it launched in 2021. No wonder it has become part of its permanent Signatures collection.
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I completely get why it has been such a success. It has that tough-edged appeal that a leather jacket has always had, but the fact that the seams are bonded rather than stitched adds a sleek modernity to the mix. You can dress it down, obviously, but you can also dress it up so that it comes across as verging on polished. Wear with a pencil skirt and heels to channel a new variety of C-suite power.
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You could also skew outsize biker, like an Ozempic-injecting Hell’s Angel who hasn’t changed their wardrobe to match their newly svelte form. Hush has one of the best (£329, hush-uk.com), while Marks & Spencer Collection’s faux iteration is considerably less challenging to the budget (£69, marksandspencer.com), Zara’s even less so (£59.99, zara.com). That is one of the problems with real leather. It costs. No wonder Bomber’s jacket was strictly leather shoulders only. Topshop’s faux leather bomber is another way to get the look without the pain (£70, asos.com).
This is not the only variety of jacket as armour that has been out on manoeuvres this month. There is also the similarly massive blazer, which Kate Winslet chose to don on Monday when she attended the premiere of her new show, The Regime.
The rule of thumb seems to be: buy one that is four sizes too big for you. Better still, buy one big enough for Bomber to wear if he had ever had reason to dress up, which, of course, he did not.
The blazer as we know it today was originally designed to exaggerate those elements of the male figure that were deemed most masculine and thus most powerful. One of the first designers to co-opt this language for women in the Eighties was Norma Kamali. “Everyone talks about the Seventies as being the birth of feminism, but for me the Eighties were really about feminism in practical use,” Kamali once said. “The silhouette I was doing — broad shoulders and thin hip — was my way of reinterpreting masculine power, but with humour.”
Things have moved on a lot since then, in every sense. We are now seeing Eighties power dressing dialled up to parodic proportions. It is no longer about making like Don Draper so much as Iron Man. There may be a postmodern tongue-in-cheekness to the dimensions, but they still signal that the wearer is not to be messed with.
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I cannot help also suspecting that there is a contradictory impulse in play too, which is that by wearing something so large you make yourself look small. And I note another contradiction, which is that on the catwalk big jackets of whichever variety are often being paired with lingerie-like pieces that would seem to semaphore availability, if not downright vulnerability. As I said, that 2024 Venn diagram is confusing.
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The key, as far as I am concerned, is not to go too oversize when it comes to blazers. I cannot be the only one who looks like a bus conductor when I attempt to give it what I am calling the full shoulder. Marks & Spencer Collection’s Relaxed single-breasted gets the balance about right, I think (£65, marksandspencer.com), ditto Hush’s herringbone (£179, hush-uk.com), and & Other Stories’ check (£165, stories.com). If you are up for colour — and I mean COLOUR — Essentiel Antwerp’s double-breasted iteration comes in sky blue, coral pink and neon green (£290, essentiel-antwerp.com).
A hybrid of the smart and the casual — and, as it happens, one of my favourite jackets on the market at the moment — is & Other Stories’ Boxy version in black with a soupçon of blanc, which offsets the chic fabric with a laid-back blouson cut (£175, stories.com). All Saints’ fringed leather blazer is also the successful sum of theoretically different parts (£439, allsaints.com).
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Whichever approach you prefer, if you are worried about looking overwhelmed, go for a cropped version, as per & Other Stories’ black or beige blazer (£165, stories.com). Or look for a style that balances out the big shoulders with a defined waist, such as Aligne’s black Mariah or collarless beige Mali (both £165, aligne.co). Layering a fitted top underneath and/or going for a neat bottom half — that aforementioned pencil skirt, or straight-leg jeans, or tailored trousers — also helps underline the fact that you are wearing a jacket the size of a sofa cover because you want to, not because you have to.
Nipping in a longer-line blazer at the waist with a leather belt could be another option. Or go for one with a belt attached, such as Cos’s grey one with a cord tie you can fasten with a bow (£155, cos.com). Mad Men with a side order of girl power. Perfect.
