Jacket of the moment (The story that keeps getting better)

One of the best things about this information age is, the ability to conduct what we have referred to before as, “post purchase research.” I have a few more details about the Sierra Designs 60/40, I failed to mention in the last post.  After buying, what I now believe to be a jacket, directly from the hand of God, I decided to hit the web and see if anyone else was charged about this piece as I was.

The first sign of a rarity is its lack of Google hits. I went all over, looking for anyone talking about this thing, and to see what the back story was. The search was becoming one in vane and I was left speculating just where this fine garment came from. Then, I finally hit on an e-bay post. Seems some guy had two of these for sale and was pretty damn excited about it. The starting bid was $100 each, and was only going up.  He then went on to pad the sales pitch by saying that, for the short time this reissue was available in stores this year, it retailed for $270, (if you could find one). Taking it even further, he mentioned that the lack of availability is based on the fact that they ONLY MADE 500 and each one is numbered.  I immediately reached for my jacket, and sure enough, there it was stitched right into the lining… 420 / 500.  I just couldn’t believe it.  How did this highly limited edition get from wherever it was manufactured, to a store in north Toronto, marked down to a ridiculous $35.00? Suffice it to say, this purchase has now become a thing of legend. Luckily I buy clothes to wear and not as e-bay investments. This 60/40 is no exception.  I do however,  find myself day dreaming from time to time about just how much they might pay for something like this in Japan…

Jacket of the moment

O-K, Soooooo… here’s a good one. This is what I might describe as the score of the century. It goes like this. About two weeks ago, I was near a certain department store, running some errands and decided to pop in to see if there were any jeans worth a look. After a quick flick through the racks, nothing was really jumping out. In my exit however, I found myself adjacent to some jackets. At this point, I’m sure you have figured out a few things about me, like my inability to just saunter past a rack of coats without at least a brief glance. So away I went; “no… no…. absolutely not! No, no, wait… what do we have here?” I saw a flash of green, a nice hood and retrieved it for investigation. Well, as you can see from above, THIS is what I pulled out; a Sierra Design 60/40 reissue. I was floored, FLOORED! It was exactly my size, and without a word of a lie, the precise style I‘ve been seriously after, for a while now. In a nostalgic tear jerk, the Sierra 60/40 also just so happens to be a personally coveted jacket of my 80s youth… unfortunately, never to be had at the time.

So here we were, everything perfect, in every way… my heart now racing. I had not yet looked at the price and I will say right now, despite my sickness for this stuff, your boy is most certainly on a budget these days. I was not expecting to drop three figures on a new jacket at that moment, (and had no interest in dodging the wife, if I did). But I thought, as we often do, an innocent look never hurts. Down to the cuff, I found the always heartbreaking price tag and pulled it up. I blinked once, I blinked twice, did a “Scooby doo” and blinked again. With endless mark down tags it read, $35.00!!!!!! Again, I spun around the room looking for the cameras and the gag-show host. But I was indeed alone with the current jacket of my dreams. Forty-one dollars later, I was walking out with the piece you see above. 

Again, this is Sierra Design’s reissue if their iconic 60/40 parka. It is a total heritage piece that gets it’s name from a weather beating, 60% to 40%, cotton/nylon blend, developed by the company in the 1970s, (long before there was Gortex). The longevity of the fabric is based in its durability vs. its cleanability, yet hangs so stylishly and not subject to the noisy “swoosh” of an entirely man-made fabric. What I am over the moon with is, the cut. It comes down, well past my butt and I’m 6’2”. Yet it stays extremely narrowly tailored. They gave this redo a few modern touches, which are actually really well done and perfectly relevant. But what I love is, how these upgrades are craftily hidden away once the jacket is done up, which acts to showcase the classic metallic buttons and four pocket front.
It’s not heavily lined, so I’m currently staring at it in the closet, with A Town Called Malice on repeat, as I wait out another Canadian winter, and can finally turn this baby loose.

(I really wanted you to see this thing in action, so unfortunately I had to model the bastard myself. Try to focus on the garment.)