Fleece jackets are more modern than you might think. The first aeroplane took flight around 70 years before Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard invented the fleece jacket as a less itchy alternative to a wool jumper. By that time, in the early 1970s, jeans had already been around for 100 years. The fleece has made up for lost time, though, and now virtually every brand — from the most cutting-edge outdoor brand to the most luxurious fashion labels — has built on Chouinard’s creation just as they have on Levi Strauss’. 

And just like there’s no beating a classic pair of 501 jeans, Patagonia’s Retro-X fleece is about as good as a soft, fluffy, polyester zip-up will ever get. However, the new generation of Retro-X’s, released last year with slightly adjusted proportions and a new recycled polyester fabric, improve upon perfection.

And as if that isn’t impressive enough, they also make it rather artful.

Patagonia’s dropping a new Retro-X, available now from a handful of retailers but yet to arrive on the brand’s website, where orange, blue, and pastel yellow forms swirl around like on an abstract expressionist painting. It’s almost like if Willem de Kooning did fluffy hiking jackets. 

Patagonia is far from the first to approach fleeces with a lightly experimental eye, as skate label Palace previously made trippy fleece jackets while Gramicci did full suits of squiggly-lined fleece, but it’s novel seeing the elderly OG livened up so artfully. The only issue is that, unlike those aforementioned styles, Patagonia’s playful jackets (including this red patterned number from last season) is only available in women's sizing. 

For most fellas, that means sizing up and adjusting to the slightly boxier cut of the women’s jacket to make it work — which isn’t the end of the world. I certainly won’t let anything as arbitrary as gendered sizing be a barrier between me and a great fleece.

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