Lemaire - Men's Raglan Liner Jacket

The liner is a genuinely useful garment category that almost nobody makes properly any more. The idea is a layer built specifically to go underneath outerwear, which means it has to solve a problem a sweater does not: it must add real warmth without adding bulk at the shoulder and the underarm, where a coat is already close. The half-raglan sleeve is the answer. A set-in sleeve puts a seam and a small amount of gathered fabric right at the point of the shoulder, which is where a coat presses; a raglan runs the sleeve seam diagonally from the underarm to the neck instead, leaving the shoulder itself a smooth uninterrupted surface. A half-raglan does that at the front and keeps a more conventional line at the back, which gives most of the smoothness without the softness of a full raglan. Fifty percent alpaca and fifty percent wool is the right blend for the job. Alpaca is a hollow-cored fiber, so it insulates better than its weight suggests and has more drape and less spring than wool, and cutting it with wool gives back the resilience and the memory that pure alpaca lacks. Corozo buttons, which are cut from the nut of a South American palm and are dense, cool, and slightly grained, so they take a knock the way horn does rather than cracking like a cast button. A woven cloth of 50% wool and 50% alpaca, lined in 100% cotton. V-neck, corozo buttons, relaxed boxy silhouette with half-raglan sleeves.