Like so many elite outerwear silhouettes, the best shirt jackets for men are descendants of utilitarian pieces designed for lumberjacks, military officers, and other guys who spend a lot of time outdoors in the wind and weather. While traditional examples are made from hardy boiled wool, in the hands of some of today’s biggest-brained designers this humble layering piece has diversified into a wide range of styles and fabrics.
If you want a classic wool number to throw on over a tee, there are plenty of options for that, but you can also find covetable examples in everything from dressy cotton twill to sturdy waterproof waxed canvas, too. That means you’ll almost certainly find an overshirt you love among the selects below—and more likely a few of them.
The Best Men’s Shirt Jackets, According to GQ
Take Me To: More Shirt Jackets We Love | How We Review Products | How We Make These Picks | What Makes a Shirt Jacket a Shirt Jacket?
Best Shirt Jacket Overall: Buck Mason Felted Field Shirt
It’s kind of a no-brainer that Buck Mason, a brand with a lock on rugged yet sophisticated wardrobe staples, is the source of the One Shirt Jacket to Rule Them All, but we’re calling it anyway. The cut is generous, with enough room to layer over a light sweater or sweatshirt, and a just-right length that falls a smidge below your waist. The 340 GSM felted merino wool fabric is heavy but understated, with a choice of two moody hues including a shade of deep brown poetically dubbed “marled river rock.” Basically, it’s the sort of jacket that’ll give you a new appreciation for cool days, crunchy leaves underfoot, and the pleasures of fall layering—which is exactly what a great shirt jacket ought to do.
Best Budget Shirt Jacket: Abercrombie & Fitch Flannel Shirt Jacket
A&F has been on something of a heater lately, with a seemingly endless stream of affordably-priced pre-Y2K classics to add a dash of Empire Records-era flavor to your look. Here’s another one, which looks like something you might have found in a SoCal thrift store circa 1992, right down to its decidedly vintage-y brown plaid. Everything else here is as it should be: boxy cut, a pair of buttoned flap pockets on the chest, and a soft cotton-poly blend flannel that’s just right for all of your seasonal layering needs.
Best Shirt Jacket Your Dad Swears By: Filson Wool Jac-Shirt
Dads may not be up on the latest lingo (skibidi what now?) or the latest fashion trends, but they know a thing or two about good outerwear. There’s a simple reason for this. After decades spent getting dressed for all kinds of weather, dads tend to find a jacket they love and stick with it. It’s called life experience, kid, look it up. That’s why dads across the land swear by Filson’s repertoire of old-school wool button-ups, which combine an unimpeachable style heritage with the superlative warmth of nature’s miracle fabric, wool. The Jac-Shirt (a portmanteau so ungainly only a dad could have thought it up) embodies this ethos to a tee, from its wind-and-water-resistant 18-oz. wool fabric to its relaxed fit.
Best Shirt Jacket for the Office: Stòffa Cotton-Twill Overshirt
Some shirt jackets lean more towards the jacket side of the spectrum, while others are decidedly more shirt-like. This one belongs to the latter category, with a sumptuous Italian cotton-twill fabric that’s lighter and drapier than a traditional heavyweight wool, and made for casual days out in the city, not chopping firewood at the cabin. Likewise, its shirt-like cut, tailored fit, and fine details like Australian mother-of-pearl buttons position it firmly in the dressiest tier of the shacket hierarchy and make it an easy way to incorporate into a casual 9-to-5 wardrobe.
Best Shirt Jacket That’s More Jacket Than Shirt: Flint and Tinder Bighorn Waxed Shirt Jacket
On the hardiest end of the spectrum, you’ll find this absolute unit of a shirt jacket, which pairs a button-down silhouette with an ultra-rugged waxed canvas fabric. For those who’ve never had the pleasure of owning a quality waxed canvas jacket, it combines the wind-and-waterproofness of heavier fabrics with the breathability and lightness of cotton, making it an essential piece of outerwear for spring and fall. Flint and Tinder sourced the 8 oz. Tekwax Evolution 6 fabric from British Millerain, the world’s foremost specialist in waxed canvas, giving it provenance, too. Hit it with a new coating of wax every year (check Huckberry’s website for a how-to video) and it’ll serve you well for years to come.
Best Shirt Jacket for Menswear Nerds: Evan Kinori Field Shirt
If you caught a glimpse of GQ boss Will Welch rolling up to last spring’s Met Gala in a bespoke Evan Kinori tux, you probably have a good idea of what the SF-based designer is all about (and why it’s worth coveting his premium takes on workwear and tailoring.) If not, this extremely vibey shirt jacket makes a fine introduction. Cut from a Japanese-made fabric woven from cotton and washi paper, it gets its slouchy fit from Kinori’s love of early-aughts skater style and its earthy brown hue from a natural dye made from logwood and iron.
More Shirt Jackets We Love
Portuguese Flannel Valle Checked Tweed Overshirt
Todd Snyder Boiled Wool CPO Shirt Jacket
Loewe Calf Hair Overshirt
Lady White Co. Wool Overshirt
J.Crew Sherpa-Lined Corduroy Shirt-Jacket
L.L.Bean Signature 1933 Chamois Lined Cloth Shirt
Tony Shirtmakers Black Watch Plaid Casentino Wool Overshirt
How We Test and Review Products
Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.
Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.
We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.
To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.
We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.
Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.
Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)
What Makes a Shirt Jacket a Shirt Jacket?
Aside from the signature combination of sartorial respectability and easy-wearing ruggedness, you’ll recognize this versatile wardrobe staple by its wide-cut body and sleeves (all the better for layering), heavyweight fabric (ideal for keeping out blustery fall weather) and a pair of chest pockets (good for phones, wallets, and other small essentials).
