It's Time to Totally Reconsider the Classic Navy Blazer
SHOP $2,095, ralphlauren.com
Welcome to The Investment, a regular column highlighting those pieces—a little pricier, a lot nicer, and entirely worth the money—that we can't help but advocate for you owning. These are the things our editors love and respect. The picks with a story to tell and a real reason to exist. Looking to put your dollars in the right place? Here's how.
It’s a funny thing, the navy, gold-buttoned blazer. Once the pillar of sartorial correctness with a definite nod to the Anglo-Saxon, it signaled to certain people that, off-duty, you belonged often to a sporting club as obscure and impenetrable as the first few episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return. Then, everything—in fashion, at least—started to chill.
In the past 20 years, things have eased to such a degree in America that even the dressiest clothes have all but lost their elitist signifiers, largely because we pretty much just stopped caring about them. But, at the same time, they’ve lost none of their charm in the interim. Now, the mere act of wearing a tie, if done with aplomb, is a symbolic act of rebellion. And one that will get you noticed.
SHOP $2,095, ralphlauren.com
Key to inverting the trad blazer, however, is that it only really works if its provenance, its construction, and its proportions are proper in the actual old-school sense. Andy Warhol knew that when he danced in his at Studio 54, while Serge Gainsbourg was a past master at ruffling establishment feathers with his disheveled oui-oui-I-indeed-slept-in-le-hedge take on it. Like with the double-breasted version we are delighted to bring to you today from Ralph Lauren Purple Label, the devil is in the details. Once you’ve established that, then it’s all about the delivery.
SHOP $2,095, ralphlauren.com
The default, old-school style calls for six buttons and a DB closure. With peak lapels, flapped waist pockets, double vents in the back, and deeply engraved gold-tone buttons, this one would not look remotely out of place in the Steward’s Enclosure at Henley. At Purple Label, added authenticity goes one step further in nailing the construction, with slight suppression at the waist (i.e., it's shaped in to the narrowest part of your body) and “roped” shoulders that add a little lift to the sleeve head, giving it a whiff of Savile Row. In fact, it is made for the label in Italy, in a lightweight, inky blue wool serge which makes it supremely easy to wear.
SHOP $2,095, ralphlauren.com
And what makes the classic blazer perfect for now, as we emerge blinking into the sun, is that it really comes into its own when it’s worn with a healthy dollop of irreverence. It has currency again, but quite differently. Fashion has been democratized. Freed of those rigid codes, the blazer can be inverted, mashed up with streetwear, dressed down with sneakers and T-shirts, whatever you please. It is the unexpected icing on the cake of any casual outfit.
Photography and prop styling by Allie Holloway
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