OK lets get this out of the way quick as its clearly the elephant in the room regarding all things Veilance. The Blazer LT was £400 this year its £440 - its not cheap, none of their stuff is cheap.
So what are you getting for your money. essentially 300g of Nylon.
Arc'teryx do not have a history steeped in celebrity or luxury - but they do have a history of firsts in the development of high performance outdoor gear and they draw on this for the production of their Veilance range.
What you are getting for your money is Arc'teryx performance clothing knowhow applied to casual clothing.
By performance, I'm talking about clothing that is:
lightweight
durable
comfortable
breathable
These attributes may be life or death in the mountains but the advantages are universal. who doesn't want these attributes in their day to day clothing?
So why not just buy outdoor gear - well plenty of people do (not everyone in a north face coat is a climber) and most outdoor brands cater for this market but their clothes typically remain heavily branded and in childish colours.
Veilance clothing is unbranded apart from the silver hang tag internally that says Veilance 'made in canada' and is low key and smart enough to wear to the office.
The combination of bleeding edge construction techniques and clean design is unique. The clothing looks and feels different to anything else.
So thats Veilance generally, the Blazer LT is constructed from a dense stretchy navy nylon material. It is a nice matt finish. It is unlined and unstructured apart from some doubling up of the fabric on the inside pocket areas and the collar. In these areas the jacket remains very supple, just enough structure for the collar to stand up.
The construction is incredibly clean, tiny microstitched seams or bonded edges where the fabric is doubled over. There is also a thin rubber cap covering the seams internally to improve water resistance.
There are internal zippered pockets on both sides, the construction is really nice with colour matched zippers.
Externally there are two vertical hand warmer pockets that are almost invisible when not in use but are eminently useable when required to both protect hands and snugg the jacket around you when you need to keep the wind out.
The jacket has clever sliding poppers to close the jacket at the front. I say clever as they outwitted me. The blazer arrived buttoned up and it took me a while to figure out how to open it.
Once opened there is a handy tear off label explaining how the buttons work : / once understood, the buttons are really good, they are tiny, they click the jacket together securely, to unbutton you have to squeeze and slide the two pieces of button together.
The jacket is not really formal enough to replace a suit jacket but that is not its intended use. You can wear it with a shirt and chinos but not pressed tailored trousers, its better for dressing up a t-shirt and jeans than replacing a traditional blazer for work.
It is surprisingly protective in use, i was impressed with the water resistance dashing between pubs in a downpour the blazer did not absorb much water and little went through to my t shirt underneath.
When its cold out you can use the pockets to snug the blazer around you and pop up the collar to keep warm. This is typically how I wear it as I have spent too much time wearing a down jacket and I have got sensitive to the cold.
The coat is easy to care for too, unusual for high end clothing, you can just shove it in the wash and its good to go again, no dry clean only here.
If you can handle the initial outlay its a really practical low key jacket with a gentle futuristic vibe.
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