I love my Barbour jacket. In fact, I can’t quite imagine life without it. Whether I’m walking the dog, taking my children to school, out in the garden, or even popping into town with friends, I know my Barbour will keep me warm in the colder weather and cool in the summer. Its waxed cotton keeps out the damp and the rain, even on drizzly mornings. When I want to head out into the garden and sort out the replanting the Christmas tree, or when I’ve volunteered for supervising my children on their school trip, I know I will be well protected.
My husband and I are both such big fans of Barbour in fact that we have recently invested in some for our children. Barbour do a whole range of kids’ coats and even offer other accessories. I love the sight of my gorgeous babies wrapped up warm in their teensy versions of my trusty coat.
I am now the proud owner of two Barbour jackets. One of them is for winter wear and the other is called a Summer Liddesdale Quilted jacket. It’s a lighter coat in a short length, so it works really well with jeans and dresses. I take it to work on occasion and am never seen without it on summer evenings. Well, you just don’t know with this weather, do you?
My love affair with Barbour started many years ago now, when I was an undergraduate student at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Heading there from the relatively warm climes of Surrey, I was a little apprehensive as to the type of weather I would encounter. Upon arrival, no sooner had I stepped off the coach then I was greeted with a shower of hail stones, the sort of wintry welcome I was to receive each time I returned to Scotland over the next three years.
As such, I was determined that before I left home I would invest in a decent coat. I worked for several weeks to save up for said purchase, doing evening and weekend shifts at a local inn, dressed as a serving wench, no less. Eventually I had enough money saved and could say my goodbyes at the pub. Off I went, gleefully counting my notes, to the nearest shopping centre with my Mum.
We looked through a fair few racks of coats, but nothing really caught my eye. After an hour’s searching I was almost ready to give up and succumb to lunch. Then, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a lovely, warm blue coat which looked equally cosy and stylish. That was that. I paid the money, took the coat and headed off to St. Andrews with a head full of dreams, warm to the bone in my lovely new Barbour jacket.
The next few years saw me wearing my jacket to all sorts of events. Summer balls, festivals, weekends away camping. All of them were perfect occasions for bringing along the jacket, just in case it rained. Which it invariably did. My love for my coat was so intense in fact that it became something of a legend on campus. When once I thought I had lost it whilst out hiking, I was preparing to offer large sums of money, namely the fee I paid for food and drink from the University halls, for its safe return. Thankfully for my bank balance, it never came to that. The coat was returned to me safely by a passing rambler, and it has stayed with me ever since.
David writes about the changing world of how classic brands continue to offer the same range of successful products decade after decade and survive the ever changing storm in one of the world’s most competitive and fad-focussed consumer markets.
