Claire’s Pick of the Best Denim Jackets

Okay so I need to talk about denim jackets because I have had the exact same argument with myself for like three years now, and it never actually resolves, it just gets rained out. Literally. Every single time.

Here’s the argument. Half of my brain thinks a denim jacket is the most useful thing you can own, throw it over anything, it fixes an outfit that’s trying too hard or one that isn’t trying at all. The other half of my brain remembers the one time I wore mine to an outdoor thing in April, got caught in actual weather, and spent the rest of the night in a jacket that weighed roughly the same as a wet dog and smelled worse.

And that’s the thing nobody puts on the label, denim does not do rain, it just holds onto it and gets heavier and colder and makes a specific squelching sound when you move your arms. So the argument is never who wins, it’s just whichever one the sky decides that day. Forecast says clear, useful jacket brain wins. Forecast says fifty percent chance, wet dog jacket brain wins, every time, no contest.

What actually makes something a pick and not just a cute jacket in a photo is honestly how it looks on a hook.

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I know that sounds insane but hear me out, mine lives on a hook by my door and also, embarrassingly, on the back of my chair at work half the days, and a jacket that looks sad and floppy hanging there is not one I’m reaching for at 7am. The good one holds its shape even slouched on a hook, doesn’t go limp, still looks like a decision instead of a thing you forgot to put away.

The wash thing is real too. Mine’s been through I want to say forty something washes at this point, stopped counting around thirty, and the fade at the cuffs and the collar is doing something a brand new one just cannot fake, it looks lived in because it is lived in. Sent a photo of it next to a stiff new one to the group chat asking which looked better and got a split vote, one person said the old one obviously, one person said I looked like I’d slept in a ditch, so, inconclusive, moving on.

The gamble pick, if I’m honest, is the cropped boxy one I bought off a trend I hadn’t actually tested yet. It photographs incredible, films even better, but in person it only works if you’re built a very specific way and I am not always that way depending on the day, the burrito, the mood. I’d say try it before you commit, and always check the sky before you commit either.