{"id":197036,"date":"2023-03-29T11:16:37","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T10:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/a-gentlemans-row.com\/?p=197036"},"modified":"2023-03-29T11:20:22","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T10:20:22","slug":"the-definitive-guide-to-the-harrington-jacket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-gentlemans-row.com\/the-definitive-guide-to-the-harrington-jacket\/","title":{"rendered":"The Definitive Guide to The Harrington Jacket"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The Harrington jacket was designed for golf, vaunted by Hollywood, and donned by the counterculture. Now, almost a century after its launch, it is a bonafide icon of rugged masculine style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like all good stories, it begins with conflict. There are two claims for the invention of the Harrington jacket. However, since no company kept official records of this time, it\u2019s impossible to know fact from fiction on these two claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first is Grenfell. In 1922, Walter Haythornethwaite was running his fathers\u2019 fabric mill near Manchester when a Dr Grenfell visited. A medical expert working in far-flung places, often treating people battling the cold. He requested a fabric be constructed from a windproof material that is \u201cpermeable to perspiration\u201d but able to keep people warm. Walter toiled at the idea before creating one of extremely tight woven Egyptian cotton. Grenfell loved it so much that he suggested it be named after him. This same fabric, alongside a house tartan lining, is used for the Grenfell Harrington jacket, said to date back to 1931. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second claim comes from the brothers that founded Baracuta, John and Isaac Millar. The pair had been making raincoats in the gloomy city of Manchester (known as \u201cCottonopolis\u201d at the time) since 1917 and supplied Aquascutum<\/a> and Burberry<\/a>, among others. As the business grew, it afforded them access to exclusive social scenes, such as the Manchester Golf Club. However, the macs they produced got in the way of a smooth club swing and so (perhaps to impress their new peers), they set about creating a new jacket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1937, John and Isaac invented the Baracuta G7 Jacket (G for golf), which was cinched at the waist to allow for an easy swing. It would later become known as the \u201cswing jacket\u201d in Japan. The Baracuta brothers had previously met Lord Lovat at the golf club and requested the use of his family\u2019s tartan to line the jacket. Lovat, the 24th Chieftain of Clan Fraser, and a man Churchill had called \u201cthe handsomest man to cut a throat\u201d, accepted. The new tartan lining gave the jacket instant prestige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1950, Baracuta began exporting to the US. It became famous in the golfing celebrity quarters, worn by Arnold Palmer, Gary Player (an excellent name for an American golf enthusiast), and Ronald Reagan. It wasn\u2019t long before US imitations were made, and the jacket was beginning to transcend the green.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The appearance of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause <\/em>(1955) was the first indication of its impact on men\u2019s style of the time. James wore a custom-made bolt red jacket designed by costume designer Moss Mabry in the style of a Harrington jacket. It epitomised the swooning rugged machismo that would come to define the jacket. From there, Elvis Presley wore one in King Creole<\/em> (1958), Steve McQueen<\/a> wore one in his famous Life <\/em>Magazine shoot in 1963 (months before the release of The Great Escape), <\/em>and <\/em>Frank Sinatra wore one in Assault on a Queen (1966)<\/em>. Hollywood drank up the Harrington Jacket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the jacket didn\u2019t get its official \u201cHarrington\u201d name until 1966 when John Simmons, a Baracuta retailer, marketed it as the eponymous Rodney Harrington Jacket. Named after the character in TV Show Peyton\u2019s Place<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Iconic Baracuta G7 <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Cultural Adoption of the Harrington Jacket<\/h2>\n\n\n\n