I bought my first harrington in 1994 convinced it would become my one reliable “going out” jacket, the thing I’d grab every single Friday without thinking twice. I’d like to have a word with that woman. She wore it out exactly four times that year and then it sat in the closet looking smug for the better part of a decade, waiting for a version of her social life that never quite showed up. That’s the argument I keep having with myself about this jacket, not whether it looks good, it does, but whether the number of nights it’s actually worn out has ever come close to the number of nights it was bought for.
Because here’s the thing nobody tells you when you’re standing in a fitting room picturing yourself at some bar you don’t actually go to anymore. The harrington is built for a very specific kind of evening, cool enough to need a layer, warm enough that a real coat feels like overkill, and casual enough that it reads like you tried without looking like you tried.
That window exists maybe six weeks a year in Denver, and most of those six weeks I’m home by nine anyway.
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When it does earn its place, it really earns it. There’s a night out version of this jacket, worn open over something with actual color in it, that survives standing outside a restaurant in the cold, survives being thrown over a chair, survives a walk home without you having to think about it once, and that’s the whole appeal, a jacket that just gets out of the way. When it starts to annoy, it’s usually about the collar, that tight little ribbed collar that looks sharp in a photo and then spends the whole night rubbing against your neck if you’ve got so much as a chunky necklace on, which I found out the hard way at a friend’s fortieth and spent the evening looking like I was fighting my own jacket.
The first proper cold snap is the real test, and I’ll say this plainly, most of these fold the second the wind picks up. Mine did fine down to about forty five degrees and then turned into a jacket I was wearing purely for the look of the thing, hands jammed in pockets, regretting every decision. I’ve got a wool coat from 2003 that’s never once made me regret anything, and this had no real competition against that, none.
My sister saw mine hanging by the door recently and asked if I actually wear it or just like owning it, which is a fair question and one I didn’t love answering honestly. This one’s a bit of a gamble, it suits someone who already has somewhere specific to be on a Friday, and if that’s not currently you, it might just become a very good looking coat rack.
