The safari jacket 2.0. One jacket for the whole autumn

In October, in Lisbon, there are a few weeks when it is still too early for an overcoat and a suit jacket is no longer enough. The rain comes in sideways, the wind rises off the river and the temperature swings eight degrees between breakfast and dinner. Those weeks need one garment: shorter than a coat, warmer than a jacket, with pockets that hold a whole day and a collar that closes the neck without a scarf. We call it the City Safari Jacket 2.0, and the word safari here means only the silhouette, the four pockets and the belt. Everything else about it is autumn.

This safari jacket for men has a large family, and the closest relatives live at Loro Piana. The Roadster Jacket, short, made for driving: Storm System membrane outside, warmth within, the same principle and the same problem as ours. The Traveller Jacket, light and universal, made to travel without creasing. The Spagna Jacket, dressier, in suede or cashmere. There is a military branch too, the American field jacket with its four pockets. And the classic cotton safari, drawn up for heat, is the distant relative: from it we took the pockets, the belt and the character, but it has almost nothing to do with autumn.

An autumn jacket has to feel like autumn, keep out wind and rain, and look current. On that count the City Safari 2.0 stands closer to the Roadster than to Kenya. The safari story is still worth telling, because without it those pockets make no sense.

Where the four pockets come from

The safari jacket was invented by British officers in the colonies long before any designer touched it. By the end of the nineteenth century, in India and East Africa, the wool tunic had become unbearable and was replaced with a jacket in heavy khaki cotton; the word khaki itself means dusty in Urdu. Four large pockets carried cartridges, maps and tobacco, the belt held the jacket to the body, and the epaulettes stayed on from the uniform. So the bush jacket was born, and with it a whole wardrobe for hot climates.

In 1909 that uniform became fashion. The former American president Theodore Roosevelt left for a year in East Africa, and his expedition was outfitted by the New York shop Abercrombie & Fitch, then a supplier of field kit. Newspapers printed photographs of Roosevelt in a four-pocket jacket and a cork helmet, and after that every American with the price of a ticket to Mombasa wanted to look the same.

Kenya, Hemingway and the golden age of the safari

The twenties and thirties did for the safari jacket what the thirties did for the dinner jacket. Everyone went to Kenya: the Prince of Wales hunted there in 1928 with Denys Finch Hatton, the English aristocrat who made safari a profession and whom Robert Redford later played in Out of Africa. Karen Blixen, who wrote the book, lived on a farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills and received guests in a safari jacket and breeches.

Hemingway reached Africa in the winter of 1933 and brought back Green Hills of Africa and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. In the photographs from that trip he wears a pale jacket with patch pockets and the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and it is that image the century kept, not the officer's. Ever since, the safari jacket has meant freedom: a man in one looks as though he has something more interesting to do than sit in an office.

In 1968 Yves Saint Laurent showed the safari in Paris under the name saharienne, and the jacket moved for good from the bush to the boulevard. In the seventies Roger Moore wore it as Bond; in the eighties it became the uniform of photographers and war correspondents. And in the two thousands the Italians crossed it with the field jacket and with waterproof cloth, and out of that came the garment Loro Piana grew a whole family from, Roadster, Traveller and Spagna. We called ours, for simplicity, the safari 2.0.

How a four-pocket jacket is built

Four patch pockets with flaps: two at the chest, two at the hip. Today they hold a phone, a passport, glasses and keys, and it is the one jacket that makes a bag unnecessary. A belt at the waist, tied behind or left loose in town. A shirt collar that turns up in wind. Length to mid-thigh, to cover a suit jacket. And colour: khaki or beige if you want Kenya, navy if you want Lisbon.

The cotton version: as in 1928

The classic safari jacket we cut in heavy cotton, in two colours, navy and beige. Cotton breathes, holds off light rain and wind, and over time takes on the patina people hunt for in vintage markets. It is the jacket for September and May, for a terrace, for a day out of town, and for those city days when a suit jacket feels like too much and going without feels like too little. The cotton version can also be made to measure, in any cotton or linen from our table.

City Safari Jacket 2.0: as in 2026

The second version was made for one specific day: morning, twelve degrees, rain coming in sideways, a meeting on the Avenida, the car parked three blocks up. Outside it carries an Italian membrane cloth that lets through neither water nor wind and that, at the same time, neither rustles nor shines like a synthetic. Inside there is a thin layer of natural wool that warms without bulk and does not make you sweat on the metro. It is the same principle Loro Piana uses for the Roadster Jacket: membrane outside, warmth within, and not a gram of down jacket.

Then come the details we remade the jacket for. The hood lives inside the collar and appears in a second when the rain hardens; in dry weather it is invisible. The high collar closes with a tab on horn buttons and covers the neck without a scarf. The cuffs button so the sleeve does not ride over a watch. There is one colour, navy, because it sits equally well over a grey suit and over a white shirt with jeans.

What to wear a safari jacket with

With a suit. A navy safari jacket over a grey or navy suit is the quickest way to look like the same man in rain as in sun. It covers the jacket in length, and a tie underneath does not look odd, which cannot be said of a parka or a down jacket.

With jeans and a sweater. Straight dark jeans, a merino sweater, suede boots. That is how the safari was worn in the seventies and how it is worn on a Saturday in Príncipe Real now.

With a shirt and flannel trousers. Here the jacket plays the part of a sports coat, and it suits it better than any blazer: the pockets make the silhouette masculine and the belt shows the waist.

There is one rule: nothing else goes under a safari jacket that is itself a jacket. It is the outer layer, and its whole construction assumes knitwear or tailoring underneath, and no second zip.

The safari jacket at ATELIER 23

Both versions are at the atelier on Avenida da Liberdade. The City Safari Jacket Navy is 650 euros and belongs to the finished collection, which means it can be tried and taken the same day, with alterations to the figure included. The cotton safari jacket, in navy and beige, is made to measure in four to six weeks, in whichever cotton or linen you choose.

If only one is to be chosen for the autumn, take the City Safari 2.0: it covers October, November and December, returns in March, and looks equally right over a suit and over a pair of jeans. The cotton one is bought second, once the first has proved that four pockets were the best thing that ever happened to outerwear.

Everything on it was once needed for something. That is why there is still nothing on it that is not.ATELIER 23

Questions before ordering