Welcome to Don’t Panic, Stereogum’s men’s fashion newsletter. In this month’s edition: who knew Marks & Spencer made a blazer that didn’t look completely derpy? Hi.
It’s Jon. When it comes to clothing, I’ve always suspected I autumn somewhere in the middle ground. I like nice things, but I’m not uncomfortable wearing cheaper items.
I’ve got wardrobe staples that cost hundreds, if not thousands of pounds…but I’ve also got perfectly serviceable trousers from Primark. Look, I get it: there’s a type of fashion writer who believes if it doesn’t come in at four figures you shouldn’t talk about it.
I’ve been to pub meetings with them.
Hipster-swishing, rarefied beasts who whisper conspiratorially to each other about the “hand-rolled Milanese buttonholes” on their jacket while surreptitiously checking whether you’ve noticed their deliberately unnoticeable designer-drab canvas trainers. The type of people who would sooner be spotted reading Fifty Shades of Grey on the Tube than admit that they’ll sometimes buy clothes from the high street. To be fair, until recently I used to be one of those people.
I thought repeatedly declaring how “you can’t buy a decent suit for less than £1k!” made me sound worldly and stylish. But then I spent 15 years working in menswear. Watching fashion at every level, from straight up dumpster dives to bespoke Savile Row, and came to the ultimate conclusion: snobbery sucks.
Whether you’re paying £20 or £2,000 there will be genius and there will be crap. I’m allowed my highs street buys, and you’re allowed to keep scrolling past them. Now for the bit where I probably lose half of my remaining readers: Marks & Spencer make a £50 blazer that looks significantly higher quality than you have any right to expect. “High quality for the price” is not what I mean.
I’m not giving it a begrudging pass with positive language dressed up as negative “it’s not great but sure”. I mean it’s actually really, really good. Allow me to explain.
Last October I was flying into London to speak at a fashion industry conference. Unfortunately, my bag didn’t make the journey from Manchester. With two hours to go until I was supposed to be presenting on stage about, yes…investment dressing…I rushed into the nearest Marks and Spencers in a blind panic looking for anything that might vaguely fit over my shirt and didn’t have pictures of creepy grannies wearing tracksuits on it.
It was under these circumstances that I discovered their not-very-Italian-at-all blazer. Priced at £49.50 I didn’t get my hopes up – but I was flinging stuff into the basket so quickly I almost knocked a drawer full of underwear on top of the elderly man trying to find some grey trousers. To my mind, there were two options: immediately head home in defeat, or throw it on over theguestlist t-shirt and see how horrible it looked I went with option B.
Fast forward a few hours. I’m back at my Airbnb sipping a celebratory whiskey and feeling smug that my conference talking won’t have to feature me wearing an apology on my back. Suddenly, a man I’ve never met before grabs my arm. “Can I ask where you got that jacket?” He asks.
It’s Rob, the fashion buyer from Net-a-porter. A guy who buys clothes that cost more than my entire monthly rent cycle every day of the week. And spends his evenings judging the jackets of randomly selected Englishmen.
Still, he wasn’t friends with my mum in primary school so I let him mansplain me about clothes to his heart’s content. “No way” he laughed when I told him “about half an hour ago. It’s from Marks & Spencer!” “You’re joking,” he said, staring intently at the garment as though it might spontaneously combust and expose it as an expensive fake “the cut isn’t bad at all. Not bad at all!” So, before we go any further let’s set expectations straight.
This is not a jacket that’s going to rival your favourite Neapolitan tailor. It’s not going cryogenically freeze dried and passed down to your grandkids as a family heirloom. But what it is is a brilliantly decent, high street blazer that – if you’re cunning about how you wear it – can go a long way in situations where you need to look smarter than it has any real right to.
How does M&S make a jacket that looks this good for ten quid? Well, contrary to what your nostrils may suggest, there’s actually a lot of things they’ve fucking got right. Fabric isn’t their bestItalian textilegrade; it’s more than likely a polyester blend that’ll sting your nostrils when it rubs together at certain angles.
It’s not the most luxurious material on the market but it’s lightweight, has a nice drape, and doesn’t look shiny and cheap like most budget jacket fabrics do. The cut is better than you think too. This isn’t slim fit or oversized: they’ve gone for a middle ground, semi-structured fit that’s surprisingly versatile.
The shoulders have minimal padding, so there’s none of that padded quarterback look most cheap blazers try desperately to hide with unflattering scowl faces. There aren’t any weird pockets, no cropped cut-offs, no uselessly oversized lapels or horrid branded buttons: it’s the jacket equivalent of whispering into someone’s ear rather than shouting down a telephone. I bought two more on the way home that weekend.
Yes, I’m a fashion editor admitting I bought multiple versions of a high street wardrobe staple. Please tweet theSlugArticle about it. Let’s talk alterations.
Bear with me here, because spending a little extra on getting this blazer tailored correctly will elevate it from merely serviceable to legitimately smart. Get it tailored. The cheap50 -you’ll spend taking it to your local tailor to get the sleeves adjusted and possibly the waist taken in will improve its looks tenfold.
Spend £15 on a jacket that looks bespoke with the right adjustments. I had my tailor take the waist in slightly and move the sleeve buttons up from the cuff (custom tailoring shout out for those who know). Change the buttons if you can sew on a decent knot.
This is easily the most important change you can make to any budget jacket. A set of good horn buttons will cost you about £15-20 for a full jacket but can completely transform the blazer’s feel. I went for matte navy to stay tonal with the jacket fabric rather than trying to be funny colours.
Pad the shoulders if you’re feeling spendy. Few details on a jacket will date it (or make it look cheaper) faster than peeking padding. The solution?
Get some decent jacket shoulder pads from your tailor and have them added in. Trust me. No one cares about your shoulders being square but you.
Most of that stuff is easy to remedy if you spend a little time and care over how you wear it. Here’s what I love about it and why, when pulled off correctly, this jacket works so well. Fit is everything.
Get this thing fitted. There’s almost no false economy in tailoring a cheap jacket that fits you like it was made for you. A poorly fitted £3,000 jacket will always look worse than something cheap that fits perfectly, and I spent £100 on having my jacket adjusted.
That extra fifty pounds worth of material matters little when it feels like a billion quid. Throw it with the right stuff. It helps that white and light blue shirts look fantastic with this blazer.
Plainweaves, no elastane, no polyester blends. Just cotton. You want a nice pair of wool trousers or cotton twills to go with it too.
Same goes for shoes: get a good pair of leather ones that you actually cared about putting on. Dressing down a luxe item is easier than dressing up a cheap one. Understand what it is.
This isn’t bespoke tailoring, and that doesn’t mean you should try to dress it as such. This is high street jacket that’ll do you perfectly well in situations where you need to look halfway decent but not get laughed out of town. If you’re wearing it to your boss’s wedding or because you legitimately work in a suit, may I humbly suggest investing the extra dough in something that suits the occasion.
It works fantastically for things like business-casual offices, dinner in a nice restaurant, gallery openings…anywhere where you need to look smart-ish but not like you’re satan’s personal tailor. Travels like a dream too; I’ve rolled it up in a weekender more times than I can count and it pretty much always pops right back into shape. Layers brilliantly under oversized coats in Autumn and Winter too.
Trust me, I know what you’re thinking. You can’t wear that thing to a wedding. No, you cant.
You shouldn’t wear it to a serious job interview either. If you’re wanting to actually wear a suit…buy a suit. That is not what this is for.
But it does the_job.it_does.well.
They change the style slightly each season; currently it’s in their “Italian fabric” smart-casual line. But fundamentally they all operate under the same principle; excellent-high-street-price fit.
I’ve tried a few on and the navy is my favourite; it’s versatile enough to wear with pretty much anything and won’t look weird if you slip it on with jeans. But the charcoal one works fantastically for slightly smarter occasions too. I’ll be honest with you, I actually think this says more about menswear in general right now than it does about this jacket.
We’re living in a weird time where “trade-down” details are beginning to filter into high street fashion from luxury markets. Whether it’s old designers leaving luxury houses to join high street brands, better global access to manufacturing plants or the industry finally listening to what its customers want – things are slowly getting better at every price point. Sure, there’s still plenty of rubbish at those price points.
But occasionally, every so often, you get happy accidents like this. Don’t Panic is published every two weeks on Tuesdays. Subscribe here.
