Trend: Brown suede. All-rounder or romantic nonsense? – Style

For you: Intermediate high

Yes, summer is over, but the good news is that now is the start of the short period in which you can wear jackets that would otherwise never work because it is either too warm or too cold or too rainy. If you have enough money for such fun, you should bet on this fashion pony: the delicate brown suede jacket. Combined with colorful silk bandanas around the neck, it can suddenly be seen on Instagram and Tiktok by every fashion influencer worth following, as if it never rained in our latitudes, and the reason for this lies somewhere between the Miu Miu collections of the past few years and the new love for cowboy-inspired items.

That’s why the still-style icon Alexa Chung has just designed such a jacket for the American hipster supplier Madewell. Luckily, because the thing is already as good as sold out, but at least she has created a kind of blueprint for everyone for the not insignificant investment in such a piece. The motto: the wilder the leather, the more formal the cut, please. Slightly tailored blazer shape, double-breasted cut, that’s more or less what it looks like, the perfect middle ground between rodeo and bank appointment. You can wear this jacket over dresses or important business trousers just as you can with a Fair Isle sweater and denim shirt when going for a walk – it’s a universally usable in-between thing, so actually a price-performance world champion. If only there wasn’t the unknown variable called the weather, but that’s not the jacket’s fault.

For him: Retrorisk

Very bad and very beautiful are sometimes so close together in men’s fashion that it’s better to avoid them if you feel even a gram of uncertainty. Even in its most tolerable form – on the feet, in the form of loafers or brogues – suede quickly looks dirty and lacking in air. The rest of the look and the wearer’s entire demeanor must definitely contain traces of dandy, otherwise the material won’t work its magic. This is especially true for large items of clothing made of suede, which is of course a wonderful material in itself. Trousers are fortunately completely out of the question, and an overshirt made of roughened goatskin like this one from Massimo Dutti is extremely, well, situation-dependent.

Open detailed view

It can be great if you jump into a 1968 Alfa Romeo Spider on a bright autumn day and speed into the country. Or if you’re on a date with your childhood sweetheart at “The Devonshire” in Soho. Or if the man has been reincarnated as Marcello Mastroianni. On more mundane occasions, such as in the waiting room at the speech therapist or on the subway to the mall, suede can quickly make you look like a silly aristocrat or the last trapper this side of the Rio Grande. Unlike women, romantic clothing doesn’t really work for men and quickly ends up looking like grandpa’s carnival costume. However, Gen Z has been making exactly these kinds of styles socially acceptable for a few years now, including absurd things like suede blousons and trapper hats. It’s just a shame that they no longer have a driver’s license to drive a Spider.