Once you own a decent suit, the sports jacket is the next thing worth spending money on. Wear it with flannels, with corduroy, with a chino, with a good cotton trouser, and a wardrobe that had two or three outfits in it suddenly has eight. That is the whole trick. We cut sports jackets in cloth that has something to say, a tweed, a herringbone, a windowpane check, a good hopsack, and we cut them to your measurements so they sit right over every shirt you own and go with every trouser in the cupboard.
The cloth is the point
A sports jacket lets you be far braver with cloth than a business suit ever will. Put a bold cloth into a suit and it can come across as loud or out of season. Put the same cloth into a sports jacket and it looks considered. This is the one jacket where the fabric is doing most of the talking, so pick something you actually like looking at.
For our weather, the ones that really work are a lightweight Harris Tweed or a woven sports cloth in cotton or a fine medium-weight wool. Hopsack is the quiet star here. Loosely woven and open in structure, it moves air and survives a Chennai evening outdoors. A brown or tan herringbone, a green or grey windowpane, a soft overcheck in natural colours: all of them give you character without limiting where you can wear the jacket.
Patch pockets on the outside, rather than the jetted or flap pockets you would put on a suit, are what tell everyone this is a jacket rather than half a suit. That is the traditional answer and still the best one. On the shoulder you can go soft and unstructured or keep a light natural shoulder, and we will tell you which one suits your build and the way you intend to wear it.