Many fashion trends are an issue of inch. This is a problem with the scint.
Firefighter jackets are a variation of a 3- or 4-pocket chore coat featuring heavy metal clasps instead of buttons, and are emerging as a trend in curious and dull spring jackets.
Oscar win Adrian Brody wore a firefighter jacket at GQ in the UK. Supreme, The Streetwear Agenda-Setters, is available at Glossy Cowhide for nearly $1,000. Instagram-Marketed brands like UK Ronning target early adopters using waist-length clasp jackets at about a third of their prices. Vintage dealers report growing interest and provide even less.
When worn, the Fireman jacket is a part of the fidget toy of some asmr doodad. These metal clasps lock with a pleasant click, like roller coaster seat belts. As the owner of the almost forgotten Italian label Energie (buyed at Vintage Shop 194 in New York for around $175), I can tell you that those closures are happy to switch over as you dimly ponder how you write a story for Spring jackets, for example.
(As probably obviously, it's a shiny clasp that lends that name to the coat. A real firefighter jacket features a metal clip that is easier to withstand than buttons and zippers when wearing gloves.)
Still, firefighter coats were there quite a while ago before the term ASMR was used. A 1979 article in St. Joseph's Gazette, Missouri, includes photos of a man wearing a $150 metal-covered “fireman jacket” from the obsolete male label Hunter Heig. “Firemen take risks,” read the accompanying article. “So they need a coat that can get the roughest treatment in the worst weather.”
(Vintage dealers today will tell you never buy a real second-hand firefighter jacket.
Throughout the 1990s, sparkly clasp jackets were common on mainstream line-up labels: Liz Claiborne, Isaac Mizrahi, and construction. All of these, if not closed, are shells of their former self. However, the most closely related to style was Ralph Lauren. Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher wore a colour-blocked version of the brand in 1994. Pictures of him wearing a blue and white coat are still cycling around the internet.
“Ralph definitely made them more comfortable,” says Matt Roberge, a vintage seller in Vancouver, British Columbia, currently selling a $350 Denim Fireman jacket with a cordoy collar and a $250 washable nare pale blue model.
“I found a firefighter jacket at a vintage store a few years ago and wanted to update,” said Sigurd Bank, founder of MFPen, the Scandinavian label worn by Tri-Classp Jacket in GQ, UK. The MFPEN version (now sold out entirely on that site) was a washed denim fabric with a cordoy panel on the back. For the clasp, Mr Bank used an Italian manufacturer that closed for real firefighters' outfits.
If firefighter jackets are popular, they do so in the wake of a wider trend: a barn coat embrace. Barber and J. Crew collaborate on barn jackets and are now almost sold out. The world's GQ and Vogues praise them as coats of the moment. LL Bean has imported a lightweight Japanese version of a 100-year-old field coat design. And labels from designers like The Row and Auralee brought the barn to the boutique with four-digit upsells.
“I've reached fatigue in my barn coat,” says fashion newsletter author Jalil Johnson, who believes he's cultivated himself in New York.
Instead, Johnson went looking for a cousin, not a clone of the barn jacket. He took him to a duffle coat, a wool overcoat that was a very Anglo rope-closed wool overcoat, but he admitted that the Fireman Jacket was another candidate for an inadequate contest, despite being a barn jacket.
“This is a continuation of all these jackets we've seen, but it's even more interesting because of the hardware,” Johnson said.
And it's a microtrend hairsplitting method that makes it a shopper worthy of it. It's not deeper than “I like these clasps,” said Kiyana Salkeld, product designer in New York and owns a firefighter coat from Brute, a French label of vintage workwear.
She resembles enough the J. Cleuburn coat she'd worn for 15 years, she said. The clasp was sturdy and secure, but not as heavy as a distraction.
“It's nice to have a slightly different version of the same thing as before,” Salkeld said.
