Warm clothing inflated with the great stories of polar exploration, winters without a future and climbs of the highest peaks in the world, important piece of hip-hop, social marker in colleges and high schools at the end of the 1980s, madeleine and trophy of the teenager galloping behind a pair of high-top self-lacing Nike: the down jacket is a strong emotional figure.
Tinted by too much childish nostalgia, however, she encountered difficulties in being admitted to the table of older children. Too bloated to borrow its codes, it then offered itself to all experiments, becoming today the medium for multiple forms of action and expression, where volume and lightness are exalted. The improbable, grandiose, XXL or oversized down jacket, call it what you like, is the star, the fetish of fashion gazettes.
To achieve this idol status, he had to agree to make efforts and give in on one level: his function. The big down jacket can be worn without complex, but open. At all times, the eye must be able to distinguish the unruly line of the garment from the more controlled line of the body. Freed from its initial function (keeping warm), considered too trivial, it is therefore suitable for parry and drafts.
Camouflaged then exhibited
At the same time, at the other end of the same spectrum, to fight the cold without looking like a sleeve, the tactic for one to two decades has also been to wear a thin sleeveless puffer jacket. Announced as a technological feat, light as a feather and a few millimeters thick, it fulfilled its function and did not detract from the silhouette. Being hot without looking fat was his implicit argument. Slipped under a coat or a blazer, it brought warmth and relief, but had the politeness to step aside, letting all the light to poorly insulating clothes haloed with seriousness.
A sleight of hand that lasted for a time and then the boom in sport, and more particularly in sport as a new fashion annex, brought her back to the fore. Street, but chic, with a striped shirt, a blazer and leather pants, for the opposite, melted into a sixties silhouette (decade turned towards bright colors and new materials), in tweed or jeans on velvet to play the gentlewoman-farmer, on an evening dress for the clash, in a neon version for the YOLO side, with cross stitching like a hunting jacket: at the end of a long trip, whether above or below, the down jacket sleeveless wins the round.
