NEW JACKET

Last week I bought what I thought was a fashionable, high quality jacket. It had a security jab attached next to one of the pockets which prevented me from opening it. Which I tried to do because there was something inside it which intrigued me. It looked like a canvas condom protruding slightly from the partially open zip. When the sales assistant removed the tag the mystery was solved. It was a small bag, into which the entire jacket could be stuffed. Like a miniature sleeping bag. Initially this worried me. Can anything stuff-able into something no bigger than a large salami really be worth fifty quid? Is this jacket going to be in any way capable of repelling the elements? For the moment I needed to at least pretend the jacket was a good buy, so I pocketed the bag and decided to revisit the issue at a later date.

A week later I left the house on a wet and chilly morning for which the new jacket seemed like the perfect outer garment. Like many mornings, by the time I got to a more sensible altitude it became clear my initial appraisal of the day’s weather was totally inaccurate. It was going to be a scorcher. So the jacket had to come off and be stowed in my backpack. Which reminded me once again of the bag in my pocket. On the train it proved the work of seconds to stuff the coat into the bag and deposit the highly compact package into my bag. Jacket gone. But not forgotten.  

I got to wondering again. Could a garment of any kind of quality be prized into such a small space without lasting damage? And if it could - if such a huge proportion of the garment was just air - was it worth the money I paid? While I had once taken the jacket’s negligible weight as a sign of precision engineering - like a solar-powered car - I now saw it for what it was. A complete lack of stuff. 

But then a much more sinister scenario occurred to me. Perhaps my jacket had actually got way enough stuff to do its job. And could still be reduced to something the size of a sausage. Which meant that most other jackets had way more stuff than was actually necessary. Surplus stuff. Stuff that creates a false impression of quality and voluptuousness when, in actual fact, it just isn’t needed. Stuff which draws us in because of our innate greediness. Like all-you-can-eat Indian buffets and Walkers Grab Bags. We’re unknowingly waisting the planet's precious resources at the behest of cynical marketing executives vying for our clothing dollar.

All around me countless commuters toiled under the weight of grotesquely burdensome outer-garments, like led-dipped lab rats, while I trudged to the office, weighed down with a terrible knowledge.

The plot thickens: The New Coat

@jesoverthinksit