The zip jacket is one of those pieces that most men own a version of and almost no one owns a good version of. It sits in a strange middle ground between knitwear and outerwear, which means the wrong one looks like it belongs in neither camp. Too thin and it reads as an afterthought. Too structured and it kills the casual ease that makes the category worth wearing in the first place. We’ve been looking specifically at jackets that solve the layering problem without creating a styling one. The kind of thing you can wear over a shirt on a mild evening, under a heavier coat when the temperature drops, or on its own in that awkward transitional weather that refuses to commit to a season. Fabric matters here more than most men realise. So does the zip quality and the collar height. Get those right and this becomes one of the most reached for things in the wardrobe. These are the ones that get it right.