The puffer jacket spent a long time being purely functional and it showed. You were warm, but you looked like you were about to board a ski lift whether you wanted to or not. What’s changed is the way designers have started treating insulation as a construction detail rather than the whole point. The result is a jacket that has the warmth doing its job quietly while the silhouette does something more considered on the outside. We’ve been looking specifically at pieces that sit closer to a tailored or technical outer layer in their overall shape, but carry quilted panels, baffle stitching, or padded sections where they actually help. Not puffers pretending to be something else. Jackets with a bit of architecture that happen to keep you warm. The distinction matters because one works with most of what’s already in your wardrobe and the other only works if your wardrobe is organised around it. These are the former.