These Jackets Are Fire
Many fashion trends are a matter of inches. This one is a matter of cinches.
The fireman jacket, a variation on the three- or four-pocket chore coat that features weighty metal clasps in place of buttons, has emerged as a curious, clangy spring jacket trend.
Adrien Brody, pre-Oscar win, wore a fireman jacket in British GQ. Supreme, the streetwear agenda-setters, offers one in glossy cowhide for close to $1,000. Instagram-marketed brands like Ronning in Britain target early adopters with waist-length clasp jackets for about third of that price. Vintage dealers, reporting increased interest, offer them for even less.
When worn, fireman jackets are part fidget toy, part ASMR doodad. Those metal clasps lock together with a pleasing click , like a seatbelt on a roller coaster. As the owner of a vintage version from the nearly forgotten Italian label Energie (purchased for around $175 at 194 Local, a New York vintage shop), I can tell you that those closures are pleasing to idly toggle as you, say, contemplate how to write a spring jacket story.
(As is perhaps obvious, it's those shiny clasps that lend the coat its name. Authentic firefighter's jackets feature metal clips that are easier to fasten than buttons or zippers while wearing gloves.)
Still, fireman coats have been around well before the term ASMR was in use. A 1979 article in the St. Joseph Gazette in Missouri includes a photo of a man in a $150 metal-clasped 'fireman's jacket' from the defunct men's label Hunter Haig. 'Firemen take risks,' the accompanying article read. 'That's why they need a coat that can take the roughest treatment in the worst weather.'
(Vintage dealers today will tell you to never buy a genuine used fireman's jacket, which may have, if not carcinogens soaked into it, then at least a smoky odor.)
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
David Walliams ‘gave Nazi salutes on BBC show'
David Walliams reportedly gave two Nazi salutes during the filming of a BBC show. During recording of the Would I Lie To You? Christmas special earlier this week, the comedian allegedly made the gestures while his teammate Helen George, told a story. The Call the Midwife star was trying to convince the other team she had sprained her wrist 'from waving too much' during the Strictly Come Dancing tour. While demonstrating the wave that had caused her injury, she was encouraged to make a grander gesture, at which point Walliams, 53, is reported to have joined in until he made a Nazi salute. The best-selling children's author was reportedly scolded by Rob Brydon, the show's host. However, as the show went on, Walliams is said to have made the gesture again. One audience member said the salutes had landed 'awkwardly' in the room, telling The Times: 'It was all very weird. 'There were gasps from the audience and the other panellists all looked very uncomfortable.' It is believed that there is no chance the footage will be broadcast. Walliams has not been on television since he left ITV's Britain's Got Talent in 2022 after he was found to have made insulting comments about contestants. He was one of the UK's best-known television personalities before it was revealed he had made a derogatory remark about a performer who made a jibe at him. Walliams also made a sexually explicit remark about a different woman who was auditioning for the ITV show in January 2020 at the London Palladium. At the time, he apologised but insisted they had been 'private conversations and – like most conversations with friends – were never intended to be shared'. A spokesman for Banijay UK, which owns the show's production company, said: 'Any attempt at humour regarding this deeply offensive gesture, whether broadcast or not, is completely unacceptable in any context. 'It was immediately acknowledged during the recording that this segment would not be broadcast under any circumstances and we apologise to those who were at the recording for any offence caused.' A BBC spokesman said: 'The use of such an offensive gesture is completely unacceptable and we apologise to all at the recording for the offence caused.' David Walliams' representatives were approached for comment. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
🎥 Fans go wild as De Bruyne arrives at top club
As a freshly crowned Serie A champion, the mood at SSC Napoli couldn't be better right now. Or could it? Because with Kevin de Bruyne, "I Partenopei" are on the verge of pulling off a truly masterful transfer coup. Transfer expert Fabrizio Romano has already given the free transfer from Manchester City his famous "Here we go". Advertisement Today, Thursday, De Bruyne arrived in Naples for his medical check and was greeted by euphoric fans. "Kevin, Kevin" chants echoed through the southern Italian metropolis. Provided all formalities are fulfilled, the deal should be officially completed in just a few hours - and Napoli will have landed a new superstar! With that, the second Scudetto in a row should actually be a done deal... This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here. 📸 DIRK WAEM
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
These are the 101 best restaurants in California
The enormousness of 'California,' as a territory and an ideology, is hard for any mind to contain. It's beautiful. It's complicated and divided and challenged. Among one of a thousand ways to define the Golden State: culinary juggernaut. Our spectrum of influence — from chefs, farmers, impresarios and dreamers who reimagined restaurant cooking into something synced with the seasons and personal identity, to the capitalists who gave birth to fast food — has shaped and kept reshaping how Americans eat over the last century. Los Angeles alone is boggling enough in its magnitudes for a critic to eat and think through. I've wandered a lot in my career, though. As the world emerged from the grip of COVID-19, a professional curiosity surfaced: What was happening in the rest of the state? What had remained and what was changing? Inquisitiveness evolved into a fevered question: What restaurants altogether tell the richest, broadest story of dining in California right now? The riddle can never be perfectly solved, and yet: This is a guide full of delicious answers. A year of driving up and down the California coast — steering inland and back, watching winter mountains bloom green and then fade to brown again by late spring — unfolded in a blur of taquerias, tasting menus, strip malls, remote highways, tostadas, dumplings, nigiri, falafel, pho, kebabs … . Moments crystallized. The triangles of buttery, corn-filled pasta that trumpeted high summer in a rustic dining room on a hilly corner of San Francisco's Financial District. The new owner who revived a 91-year-old diner in downtown Sacramento with a burger she calls 'Southern Daddy' and her calling-card sweet potato pie. The glamour-soaked San Diego dining room, all golds and greens and chiaroscuro lighting, that set a cinematic mood for an evening of modern Vietnamese cuisine. Attempting a statewide survey stemmed organically from the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles project that The Times has published annually since 2013. I've written or co-written six of them now. 'Best' is a word for headline catnip that I live with but don't love. 'Essential' has always been more of a guiding precept for me. I want readers — you — to know about places for their incredible food, but I trust these very human endeavors also speak to something larger about dining and life in Los Angeles. Seven years in, L.A. feels like my home home. The San Francisco Chronicle employed me nearly 20 years ago; the Bay Area is a mainstay in my adult life. I've never been keen on the 'L.A. versus S.F.' tribalism. Isn't it kind of staggering that this wild state, slightly smaller than Morocco and currently the fourth-largest economy on the planet, has two uniquely different and world-class urban hubs? And there's so much more of California to see and taste. Too much, in fact, to fit into the usual framework. Yes, this is a list of 101 restaurants that serve many kinds of foods at every price tier. (I did leave off the three most famous tentpoles in California fine dining: Chez Panisse , Spago and the French Laundry . You know them. Go if they call to you.) Many of the entries put forth 'extra helpings' — corresponding pillars of excellence that also deserve recognition. It's the whole blessed state. There's a lot to recommend. These travels have likewise spurred fresh, deeper guides to popular destinations such as San Francisco , San Diego and Palm Springs . More are coming. No single person could filter through the infinite possibilities; gratitude goes to the many food-writing peers and some well-fed friends who gave me guidance at every major intersection. I did not rank these restaurants. This isn't about numerals or symbol ratings. It's one glimpse into our cultures and diversities — into cuisines that uphold traditions, or disrupt with originality, or inhabit some fruitful middle ground. Any endeavor like this is an invitation to savor and to debate. I crisscrossed plenty of California. It still feels like a beginning.
