The Dumas Blazer Is a Go-Anywhere, Do-Anything Jacket
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Shop Now $1,350, nililotan.com
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I was six years old the first time someone clowned my last name. It was a cold day in 1987, and I was eating my bologna sandwich near the playground at E. Ruth Sheldon elementary when two girls—who were maybe in 5th or 6th grade—spotted “Danny Dumas” written by my mother in permanent marker on my Peanuts lunchbox. “Look! His last name is dumbass!” one of them squealed as they proceeded to laugh for the better part of 45 minutes.
I was shocked. (Shocked I say!) It wasn’t that these two older kids made a lazy joke but that they openly swore—something that, up until that point, I had only heard my parents do. For the next 36 years my last name was, understandably, an easy target. Sure, there were sporadic pop-culture victories. A pretty funny Mug Root Beer commercial here, a reference to Alexandre Dumas in the Shawshank Redemption there. But for the most part, being attached to a surname that could be so easily tweaked into an insult has sucked.
So, color moi surprised when Esquire’s very own senior commerce editor Krista Jones Slacked me one day with the news that Israeli-American label Nili Lotan had named one of its latest pieces The Dumas Blazer. My immediate reaction was one of confusion. The blazer’s price tag was $1,350 – a significant sum. Why would they give it a name that might doom it from the start? I contacted the brand hoping to talk them out of this terrible name. They sent me a Dumas blazer to check out instead.
Shop Now $1,350, nililotan.com
It feels like luxury.
The first thing you have to understand about the Dumas (feels weird typing that) is that it’s soft. Almost alarmingly soft. That’s because it’s made from the wool from a lamb’s first shearing, AKA virgin wool. Known for being extraordinarily pliable and pleasingly supple, virgin wool is also a lot more pricey than the other stuff because, well, it’s a one shot deal. The lamb can only give that quality wool once, hence the name.
That softness and pliability also means the Dumas (okay, getting less weird but still weird) softly drapes cleanly over the shoulders but still feels robust and solid. Most of the time when you toss on a modern blazer you have to choose between ease and structure. The Dumas somehow delivers both. I asked how Nili Lotan pulled this off, and they said it all has to do with their intense fitting process. After a garment’s design concept is approved, it goes through two fittings to become a showroom sample. Once it’s a showroom sample there are even more fittings—numerous tiny tweaks and adjustments are made to get every detail just right—until the garment is ready to go into production. Right before production, however, there’s a final fitting that gets the piece as close to perfect as possible.
Shop Now $1,350, nililotan.com
It goes with everything in my wardrobe.
There are other tailoring choices that, at first, might seem a little unusual but work well in practice. It's a classic notch lapel, but the closure is a single button (instead of the standard two). The shoulders are a little wider. The body, a little longer. Nili Lotan said this “allows the blazer to be more openly styled with a variety of pieces.” The decision to go with a single button closure, “helped alleviate the classic structure and business essence of the suit.”
I found myself wearing it out quite a bit; the versatility was only a little less surprising than the softness. My ideal uniform was a crisp John Elliott foundation T-shirt, Rag and Bone Fit 3s, and a pair of RM Williams Chelsea boots, all tied together with this blazer. I could hit a coffee shop for a meeting at 2pm, report on an Esquire Best Bar at 5pm, and be at a Michelin starred dinner at 7 PM without having to awkwardly change my outfit.
Shop Now $1,350, nililotan.com
Just like its namesake, it's timeless.
The Dumas blazer was named after the most famous Dumas who ever lived: Alexandre, writer of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and countless other novels, plays, and (hello!) magazine articles. After reporting on this blazer, I’ve gotten to know another great Dumas author, Henry, who, before his untimely and suspicious death at 33, wrote volumes of inventive and eloquent prose that influenced the Black Aesthetic movement in the 60s and 70s and had Toni Morrison referring to him “an absolute genius.”
I used to think it would have been a genius move by my great-grandparents to opt for a last name that was a little more fitting when they landed in America in the 1920s. From the little that I know of them, something like “Lawless” would have been apt given their appetite for bootlegging and casual violence.
But after shouldering Dumas for the last four decades I’m happy they didn’t. Not only is it the namesake of two of the greatest writers in history (not to mention an Ohio State safety who delivered one of the hardest hits ever in college football), it’s now the name of my new favorite blazer.
Shop Now $1,350, nililotan.com
Photography by Joe Lingeman. Prop styling by Heather Greene.
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