What Is a Blazer?

Where does the blazer come from?

The blazer comes from 19th-century Cambridge, where the Lady Margaret Boat Club of St John’s College wore jackets of bright red cloth. The Museum at FIT dates the first of them to 1825, the year the club was founded, and says the name came from that “blazing red cloth”.

The word reached print later, and sources disagree on when. Etymonline records blazer for a bright-coloured jacket by 1880, as British university slang, originally for the club’s red flannel jackets. The club’s own history ties the word to the same jackets but gives the London Daily News of 22 August 1889 as its first known record.

College athletes in other sports took up the blazer through the 19th century, first in England and later in the United States. By the late 1800s blazers were made of striped flannel or solid woollens, mostly navy blue, and the solid ones carried crests.

Rowing clubs favoured the single-breasted cut. Clubs, colleges and schools had blazers made in their own colours for events such as the Henley Royal Regatta, often with a crest embroidered in heavy gold thread on the left breast pocket. Before the Second World War, the crested blazer moved beyond the playing field into casual dress and American Ivy style. The Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion calls it a vital part of the “preppy” or “British look”.

The HMS Blazer story is unproven

A rival story, told as fact in the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion, gives the blazer a naval origin. In it, the captain of HMS Blazer had short double-breasted jackets cut in navy serge for his crew when Queen Victoria visited the ship in 1837, and the jackets, with their brass Royal Navy buttons, impressed the Queen.

Treat the story as unproven. The encyclopaedia cites no record from the 1830s for it, and the documented history of the word points to Cambridge rowing instead: Etymonline and the Lady Margaret Boat Club both tie it to the club’s red jackets, and neither mentions the ship. Etymonline’s earliest date, 1880, comes more than 40 years after the supposed visit. The navy may still have shaped the cut, since the same entry calls the blazer possibly a development of the nautical reefer jacket.

What makes a blazer a blazer?

A blazer is an odd jacket, meaning one worn without matching trousers, made in solid or club-striped cloth and marked out by its buttons: metal or enamel, often carrying an emblem. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary defines it as a plain jacket, typically dark blue, “not forming part of a suit”.

The Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion describes the classic version as thigh-length, with brass buttons, two side vents and often a badge on the breast pocket. It also names what sets a blazer apart: with simple flat brass buttons instead of emblem buttons, a blazer becomes “difficult to distinguish” from other sports jackets.

What is the difference between a blazer, a sport coat and a suit jacket?

A suit jacket comes with trousers in the same cloth, a sport coat is an odd jacket often in textured or patterned cloth, and a blazer is an odd jacket in solid navy or club colours with metal or enamel buttons.

A quick test: a jacket sold with trousers in the same cloth is a suit jacket, even when worn alone. Tweed or a check often means a sport coat. Solid navy or club stripes with emblem buttons mean a blazer.

What are the main types of blazer?

The two main types are the club blazer and the solid navy blazer, joined later by golf blazers in bright colours. Blazers come in both single- and double-breasted cuts.

How do you tell a well-made blazer?

You tell a well-made blazer by checks you can do in a fitting room: a smooth, bubble-free front, sleeves that hang without diagonal wrinkles, stripes that meet at the seams and buttons sewn on a thread shank.

Canvassed or fused front

A tailored jacket keeps its shape with interfacing, hidden layers inside the front. The Museum of Design in Plastics describes the canvas forepart, which “shapes and strengthens the front of a jacket”, and the padding inside the lapel. These layers were traditionally made of horsehair, wool and linen, and in tailoring they were held in place by hand stitching.

A fused front swaps those stitches for adhesive. Fusible interfacing is chemically treated to bond to the cloth when heated. It began to appear in the 1960s and sped up production. A late-1950s British tailoring booklet lists 47 parts in a jacket.

Fusing is not a fault in itself. US university extension standards for clothing quality accept sew-in or fusible interfacing. It should have the same give as the cloth, leave its colour and handle unchanged, and appear “flat and smooth with no bubbles, wrinkles or folds”. Test for exactly that:

• Look along the fronts and lapels in raking light. Ripples or bubbles across the chest are a red flag.
• Compare the front with a sleeve in daylight. The two should match in colour and surface texture.

Shoulders, sleeves and collar

• Each sleeve should meet the shoulder in a smooth, rounded cap, with no pleats or gathers unless they are part of the design.
• The sleeve’s crosswise grain should sit parallel to the floor and its lengthwise grain at right angles to it, with no diagonal wrinkles. On a striped blazer, the stripes should run straight down the sleeve.
• The shoulder length should match your own, and the armholes should fit without gaping or straining. Reach forward: there should be ease at the underarm and in the sleeve cap.
• The collar should lie smooth against the neck, without gaps or wrinkles, and its outer edge seam should not show.
• Fastened, the jacket should hang straight and parallel.

Buttons and buttonholes

• Each button should stand on a shank, a short stem of thread or part of the button itself, long enough for the cloth it fastens through.
• Buttons should be sewn with double thread and look neat on the inside as well as the outside.
• Buttonholes should be sized to the button, stitched securely with uniform “lips” and cut with the grain of the cloth.

Stripes and nap

• On a striped club blazer, the stripes should match at the seams.
• On napped cloth such as flannel, the nap should run in the same direction on every part of the jacket.

How do you wear a blazer?

Wear a blazer as an odd jacket: pair it with trousers in a clearly different cloth and colour, and dress it up or down through the shirt. It suits formal and semi-formal wear, and the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion notes that a well-constructed blazer “can make even a pair of jeans appear smart”.

• Keep the trousers distinct. Grey wool, cream cotton or denim all stand apart from navy.
• Set the level with the shirt. A collared shirt and tie suit semi-formal events. An open-necked shirt or a fine knit suits a smart casual dress code; 1980s executives often wore the blazer with an open shirt and cravat.
• Respect insignia. Crests and club stripes identify a club, college or school. If you belong to none, a plain navy blazer with plain metal buttons avoids wearing someone else’s colours.
• Let a crest stand alone. If the breast pocket carries a badge, leave out the pocket square.