As long as it’s cold outside and you don’t pair them with Aviators – which is as grave an over-egging of the thematic pudding as wearing chukka boots with a polo shirt – there are no disadvantages to wearing it. As well as being entrenched in popular culture, it’s a material that offers the warmth of a puffer coat with the suave, virile authority of a trench. We’re talking, of course, about shearling: a material which invariably qualifies collars and lapels for the adjectival use of the phrase “fuck off”, and makes for linings as warm, as tactile, as any material on the planet.
The technical difference between sheepskin and shearling depends on who you ask – some hold that it can only be the latter if the sheep from which it has been sourced was recently shorn, while others insist it depends on the age of the animal. What we can be sure of, though, is that man’s relationship with ovine pelts goes back a long, long way.
