During many a rainy afternoon, we’ll sit in the Proper office and daydream about the dream jacket. Many wild and wacky ideas get thrown about, but we always seem to return to one vision – a single piece of outerwear that can do everything. A sort of convertible amalgamation of a rain jacket, with an insulating liner, that can be chopped and changed into multiple iterations. We’ll then begin thinking about colour, fabric and design – until 30 seconds later we’re abruptly interrupted by the growing number of emails in our inbox.
As it turns out, we’re not the only ones with these visions. Café Mountain have long thought about the dream jacket too – and they must have a far quieter inbox than us, or more of a can-do attitude (much more likely) – because they’ve actually put their ideas into practice, in collaboration with Norbit.
If you’re not familiar, Norbit is headed up by Hiroshi Nozawa, a designer with a real knack for making functional clothing that looks the absolute nuts. Nozawa’s work is rooted in the outdoors, but not in a hyper-technical way. It’s more about useful details, nice shapes, and clothes that subtly get on with their job, which is probably why this collaboration made so much sense for Café Mountain, who speak a lot of the same language.
The jacket itself takes cues from an old English fishing jacket – boxy, practical, pocket-heavy – and reworks it through Hiroshi’s lens. It feels familiar and practical without tipping into full-on tech. Everything is there for a reason, whether that’s ease of movement, protection from the weather, or somewhere sensible to put your hands (and everything else you insist on carrying around).
The jacket is comprised of two parts. A shell, and a liner (just like our visions). The shell has been cut from durable Solotex fabric, which maintains shape without feeling stiff. There’s a clean collar, a detachable hood for when the weather can’t make up its mind, and a shaped chin guard to keep gusts out.
Then there’s the liner. Lightweight, down-filled, and full-length, it adds warmth when you need it and slips out easily when you don’t. Finished in a subtle two-tone nylon, it’s got oversized pockets and a secure front closure, so it works just as well as a standalone garment as it does when it’s zipped into the shell.
That’s the real appeal here. This isn’t one and a half jackets marketed as two. It really is two. A duo of genuinely versatile, complete pieces of outerwear. Wear the shell, wear the liner, wear both together. Cold mornings, mild afternoons, changeable weekends, or just indecision – it’s built for all of it.
To put it lightly, the Café Mountain x Norbit ‘2-in-1’ Layered Down Jacket is the jacket of our dreams. The kind of thing we always end up talking about but would never be capable of making ourselves. So we’d like to personal thank both brands for making those dreams come true.
The Café Mountain x Norbit by Hiroshi Nozawa ‘2-in-1’ Layered Down Jacket is available to purchase now from Café Mountain
