The Once And Future Heritage Jacket

As It Enters Its 125th Year Of Existence, Barbour Looks Ahead While Keeping One Foot Planted Firmly In The Past

- Haley M Lotek

On a cool summer morning in South Shields, England, Barbour factory workers are beginning the approximately 650 jackets they complete in a day. At the start of the production line, a man named Gary cuts lengths of waxed cloth; a woman named Mary cuts pattern linings. Every worker gets a specific uniform color—machinists in green, supervisors in blue, quality control in purple—and they sit in rows, school photos of their children taped to the arms of sewing machines, as the disembodied yet recognizable elements of a Barbour jacket proceed down a modest assembly line.

Each jacket represents five arche types: fishermen, hunters, motorcyclists, soldiers, and the people who wish to look like them. By the time one garment is finished, it has been touched by dozens of hands and holds 125 years of history. As Barbour prepares to commemorate its quasquicentennial, those who make and wear the brand reflect on the way this family business still resonates all over the world.

For 50 years, the company has been run by Dame Margaret Barbour, whose husband, John, passed away suddenly in 1968 from a brain aneurysm at only 29. On her watch, Dame Margaret introduced an evolution of the Barbour line that elevated its pieces from staples to symbols of style. She designed the now-classic Bedale and Beaufort jackets in the 1980s, streamlined outerwear that became essential to the trendsetters of the era, known as Sloane Rangers. (Think Princess Diana striding through the British countryside.) Icons like Steve McQueen, James Bond, and Kate Moss are closely associated with the Barbour jacket. Together they create a unified theory of casually contradictory Western elegance: royalty prized for seeming, somehow, ordinary and ordained.