Athletic British-Made Men's Jackets — Voted by the Community

British jacket making draws on two long traditions: city tailoring and country clothing. From the late eighteenth century, tailors gathered in the streets around Savile Row in London, and through the nineteenth century they built a reputation for structured, well-fitted coats and jackets. Country sport shaped the other strand. The Norfolk jacket, a belted jacket with box pleats that let the wearer raise a gun freely, was adapted for shooting in the 1860s and became fashionable in the circle of the Prince of Wales. By the 1870s and 1880s it was worn for many kinds of outdoor exercise. The blazer is usually traced to the Lady Margaret Boat Club at St John's College, Cambridge, founded in 1825, whose members wore bright red flannel jackets. The style spread to other boat clubs at Oxford and Cambridge, and by the late nineteenth century the word was used for similar club jackets. Tailoring and country clothing still shape many of the jackets cut and sewn in Britain today.