October is mostly an argument about the weather, and your diary pays no attention to it. A nine o'clock presentation, a lunch on the other side of town, a train at six: you leave the house in the cold, take your jacket off somewhere around the second meeting, and put it back on in the evening with the faint resentment of someone who was promised it would be warmer.
Which means that for much of the season an autumn jacket is less something you wear than something you carry: over an arm, on the back of a chair, folded into a bag on a train. The more useful question may be how a jacket behaves when you are not wearing it. Does it fold? Does it weigh anything? Does it look intended, hanging off your elbow?
That is where we think the bomber has the edge. Cropped at the waist, with a ribbed collar, cuffs and hem, it leaves the tailoring or the dress underneath to do its job, and it goes on quickly, which matters more than fashion writing tends to admit.
What to look for
If you are choosing one, three things deserve a minute. Weight, first: light enough to keep on through a long lunch, because restaurants are almost always warmer than the street. Then length, where a jacket that stops at the waist keeps the line of whatever you are wearing in view. And the edges: a ribbed collar, cuffs and hem are what give a bomber its shape.
Two sides, one jacket
Ours is the Ankara, and it has one extra idea, which is that it reverses. One side is a floral print in teal, burgundy and pink. The other is plain white. The deep green ribbing is the same on both, so it reads as one jacket whichever way round it goes. Nobody will ask which side is the real one; both are, and since both are meant to be seen, it looks as deliberate folded over your arm as it does on. The fabric is a light 100% polyester that packs down small, and the Deméa Paris logo sits quietly at the back of the collar.
In effect it is two jackets in the room of one, and the choice between them is more a question of where you are going than of what the sky is doing.
Monday, Saturday, Thursday
On Monday, plain side out, over black trousers and a fine knit, for the meeting where you will be doing most of the talking. White against a dark base looks crisp, and the jacket comes off at your desk in a single movement.
On Saturday, printed side out, with our Azalée skirt, an indigo denim faux wrap, whose blue the teal in the print seems to recognise. Lunch has no agenda, and when the terrace warms up the jacket goes on the back of the chair and stays there.
On Thursday it goes into the bag as you board the train to the other city and back on as you arrive, in good time for a dinner that may well run late. You can turn it to whichever side the evening seems to want and wear it over a simple dress.
Autumn will go on changing its mind until November. Your plans can stay as they are.
Meet the Ankara bomber jacket.
