Men's Waxed Cotton Jackets -- Wax Jacket Styles - How To Re-Wax Jacket & Buy Waxed Jacket
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be introducing you to the waxed cotton jacket.
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Okay, so the waxed cotton jacket.
I'm wearing one right now.
This one is more of a hunting design.
They come in wide varieties.
Waxed cotton more refers to the fabric and the properties of the fabric, so if you think
about wax, what happens when water goes on wax or it goes on a duck or any type of animal
or a piece of clothing which has a film on it?
It just rolls off, exactly, so that is the idea behind the waxed cotton.
This has been with us for a long time, so let's go back and look at history.
We see the Egyptians and they had sails.
They were out sailing on the ocean or the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, and we would
see them that they figured out that if they waxed the sails, if they took those paper
sails and they wax them, they did a much better job of catching air and they were a lot faster.
They were lighter than the other alternatives out there and it worked for them.
Now, modern day, we started seeing that -- well, not modern day, but a few hundred years ago,
we still saw sails that would use a film and put it into the actual sheets and it would
do a better job of not letting the wind go through and it would catch the wind pull.
So we see a lot of fishermen and we actually see a lot of clothing that would come from
old sails and it would still have a lot of the same properties of being waterproof, which
is very good if you work out on the open water.
So this was brought into men's wear.
One of the famous examples is the trench coat, so the trench coat used waxed cotton and that
was used successfully in very bad weather in the trenches during World War I and beyond.
Now, in hunting, it plays a great role.
You see I've got a hunting jacket.
One of the most famous hunting jackets you see out there is made by Barbour.
That is an English company.
In this case, I'm not wearing a Barbour.
I'm wearing one made by Eddie Bauer.
I like the style, but the style is pretty, I would say, universal when it goes for these
hunting jackets, and this one in particular, I'm going to use it as the example.
So what we see is the style, and I've got another one made by Timberland with another
waxed cotton.
They usually have this green drab color, so this is a little bit of kind of just blending
in to the natural environment.
It's not really camouflage, but it's also not sticking out, as many hunters know.
The color is less important.
You could actually go with a bright orange and that would probably be better.
I know a lot of hunting stores that do sell it, or you could wear a vest with this and
still wear this traditional jacket, but oftentimes, what we see on these is placement for the
hands, so this is a big one.
You have a place where you can basically put your hands in here on this jacket.
I've got it right here.
On this jacket, they do not have that button over, but they do the same placement at this
level for the arms and for the hands.
It's higher so that if you have your rifle slung over, you can still comfortably put
your hands in here.
They also have these large lower pockets.
And again, I see these on the Timberland as well and you're going to see those on the
Barbour.
Can anybody guess what the large lower pockets are for, anyone?
Ammunition, right, so that's where you would actually open this up and you could put large
amounts of ammunition or anything else you need when you're out hunting.
Now, the inside of these jackets usually are made with -- this one's got a bit of corduroy,
but they're insulated.
There are more pockets, but these are warm jackets.
But the most important thing in getting back to what we're talking about, the waxed cotton,
is the outside.
These are water-resistant, not waterproof.
Waterproof, you've got to have actual rubber, something that you could leave the water on
there for a while.
These are water-resistant so they will resist a high amount.
I mean, water is just going to roll off and you could be caught in a storm and you will
remain dry underneath.
It will absorb just a bit, but we're talking a minute amount because the waxed cotton,
another great thing about it is it's actually woven with a type of cotton that already has
the film on it, so the wax is basically woven into the actual -- well, it depends on who
made it and what mill it came from.
But normally for these jackets, you're going to see that they used a good waxed cotton
thread and afterwards, they treated it as well.
Now, one of the things with waxed cotton, why a lot of people want to avoid it and they
go with a modern equivalent or something different is that they don't want to deal with the upkeep.
Depending on how much you wear the jacket, I would say maybe once every few years, you'll
probably need to send it in or get a small kit in which you will apply a little bit of
wax to this to reinforce what was originally put on these jackets, but overall, I think
they're very handsome jackets.
This one again made by Eddie Bauer, I'm happy with.
It's harder in United States to find Barbours.
They don't make them easy to find.
You can occasionally find some in thrift stores or in the larger cities where they actually
have stores, but you can find a lot of companies, like I said, Eddie Bauer, Timberlands.
I like the Eddie Bauer one more than the Timberland.
I'm actually going to send the Timberland back and keep this Eddie Bauer jacket, but
I would say a medium weight jacket.
So right now here in Wisconsin, it was just negative 20 the other day, and that's Fahrenheit,
guys.
So I know for you Canadians, that's nothing, that you laugh at that, but here in the United
States, negative 20 is relatively pretty cold.
This jacket I would not be wearing out there.
I would be wearing a parka, which is a whole another style.
All right, guys, so hopefully you enjoyed this.
Hopefully you learned something and I will see you in the next video.
Take care.