Schöffel's legendary Oakham Fleece Gilet

The best gilets and vests for men

02 Dec 2025 | |By Richard Brown

Practical, adaptable, perfect for layering, and no longer the preserve of shooting parties, the humble gilet has become a modern wardrobe staple

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Gilet season begins shortly after the Glorious Twelfth (although sleeveless Schöffel fleeces represent year-round go-tos for most of the country’s groundsmen and gamekeepers) and extends until the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, during which vest-sporting alumni, ensconced within the gleaming towers of the City during the working week, can be spotted lining the banks of the River Thames with their employer’s logos pseudo-ironically emblazoned on their chests. The season peaks around November, just before the Big Coat window swings open, and picks up again in March, most ubiquitously in Wall Street and the Square Mile, where spreadsheet botherers turn to the cocooning effects of the technical bodywarmer ahead of the great chinos-and-quarter-zip runup to summer.

In 2018, even before Covid-19 had sounded the death knell for dressing smartly for the office (or going to the office at all), Uniqlo had installed a vending machine at San Francisco Airport. For fifty bucks, the machine spat out down-feather gilets to any visiting VC or tech guru looking to channel the soft-power cachet of the stealthy zip-up. Such was the garment’s status as the unofficial uniform of Silicon Valley, that the vending machine was reportedly making $10,000 a month. Ka-ching!

Since then, the gilet, in its myriad sleeveless guises, has been embraced by everyone from high-fashion big wigs to the most in-demand names in major league streetwear, from Italy’s loftiest designers to the most functional of outdoor apparel brands. As such, the gilet gamut now runs from puffer to padded, from tailored to technical, from restrained to statement; armless articles that are as omnipresent on Milanese runways as they are in Manhattan boardrooms, as ubiquitous in Hackney as they are in the home counties.

With gilet season in full swing, here are some mighty mid-layers in which to in-vest (geddit?)…

Schöffel Oakham Fleece Gilet

£160