I found a jacket at the thrift store on the corner of my street, which at this point I’m pretty sure I own outright, and didn’t realize until I got to the register that it was a women’s medium. Some sort of forest green wool blend, substantial weight, $4. It was the third thing I tried on underneath the aisle mirror because it was passing through my shoulders better than anything I’d grabbed from the mens’ side in the three weeks prior of looking, then I noticed the damn tag and stood there blankly trying to mentally justify liking something I knew I did.
I bought the jacket. Left the store wearing it, too, because it was cold out and I wasn’t about to lug a perfectly good jacket home in a bag like it was shameful.
The fit is the whole argument, the label is just noise.
I hate that when men have bodies at the far ends of Society’s graph we still have to jump through flaming hoops to find clothes that fit. We know how hard it is when you’re bigger than most offerings. Let me paint you a picture of how it goes when you’re smaller:
Men’s jackets are cut and tailored to a narrow frame.
Wide shoulders, straight taper through the waist with generous slop through the chest assuming you have wide shoulders to fill it out. Have different shoulders and a lot of guys do, thinner or broader, and you either get drown in blazer shape or choked when buttoning it closed. Women’s cuts are, for lack of a better term, cut differently. Many of them are narrower through the waist and refuse to assume you have XXXL mens shoulders. That green jacket wrapped around my shoulders and hit all the right spots. Not wrinkling at my hips, not tightening across my torso when I put my hands on my hips. It wasn’t tailored to the “correct” male measurement but to the body I actually live in.
I did the math. Heck, I always do the math. Dollar per wear whether I want to or not, it’s how I’m wired. $4, worn probably 22 times since October. Less than twenty cents per wear. I calculated that twice. The first time I was blasting it into my phone and missed a zero so it came out to $2 per wear and I thought “man, that’s still pretty good. That’s still a quality jacket” before I deleted it and did it again. Got the right answer and sat at my desk letting the math high wash over me.
To me, that’s way more important than caring if your jacket has a women’s label sewn into it. That $4 jacket that fits like it was tailored and gets worn all the damn time is infinitely better than a $60 jacket from the mens section that doesn’t fit and mocks you every time you open your closet. Speaking of which, I’ve got two of those in my closet right now. Purchased new, full price, because the label said “mens” and I figured that was all that mattered when looking at fit. Guess what mattered? Nothing matters but how it looks on you. The label doesn’t “settle” anything.
Nobody at the job site said a word about it. Trust me, that means something.
I wore that jacket twice on the job, first over a t shirt underneath a work coat when it got chilly out. I thought about it after the first time wondering if anyone would say something. Would one of the other guys give me some mansplanation about how men’s clothing is fundamentally different from womens’, or how wearing something wasn’t really “menswear” until it was purchased new. Did anyone care? Of course not.
Why? Because nobody gave a shit. Not because they’re “down with that equal rights thing” when it comes to menswear, lots of them aren’t. They just didn’t care because it looked like a jacket. Green jacket, nice buttons, fits ok. That’s the test right there. It’s the test I trust more than some hot take I can spit out sitting here. If you like how something looks, and it fits, wear the fuck out of it.
I think the reason people ask if men can wear womens jackets at all is because they think there’s going to be some give away, some part of the clothing itself that’s going to scream from where it was purchased. It doesn’t. Fabric doesn’t know gender. A good cut doesn’t care if you slipped it off a woman models shoulders or a man. The only thing that does have gender is, in most cases, the cut itself. Still, that’s changing more every year as more brands blend the line on purpose. Once you’re wearing it, no one cares where it came from. They’ll notice how it fits, and if the color works with anything else you got.
The only real downside I’ve found besides the whole button issue (we’ll get to that) is women’s jackets often button opposite of men’s jackets. Left over right, instead of right over left. Didn’t take me long to notice that first time either. Started wondering why my jacket felt off when I put it on, going around like “uh…something feels wrong but I can’t put my finger on it”. Passed a window and caught it.
Nearly choked myself laughing on the sidewalk.
Won’t affect how it looks open or if you wear it zipped up, but good luck not thinking about it if you care about stuff like that. Speaking of:
Does it matter if your jacket is womens? No. Not when you wear it to work, not when you look in the mirror, hell not when you look at your receipts. What matters is how it fits in those areas. Fuck everything else. Tags aren’t cute. Tags were never your friend.
Liam is a sparky from Birmingham who got into charity shopping during one very skint year and never really stopped. He works out the cost per wear on everything he buys, sometimes out loud, sometimes wrongly the first time.
