2021 Chevrolet Blazer

Blazer

A blazer is a type of jacket resembling a suit jacket, but cut more casually. A blazer is generally distinguished from a sportcoat as a more formal garment and tailored from solid color fabrics. Blazers often have naval-style metal buttons to reflect their origins as jackets worn by boating club members.

A blazer's cloth is usually durable, as it is intended as outdoor wear. Blazers are often part of a uniform that denotes, for example, an airline's employees, students of a particular school, members of sports clubs and athletics teams, or guests of a particular hotel.

History

The blazer originated with the red "blazers" of the Lady Margaret Boat Club (1825), the rowing club of St. John's College, Cambridge. The Lady Margaret club jackets were termed blazers because of the bright red cloth, and the term survived the original red coat.

A writer to the London Daily News (22 August 1889) commented that "In your article of to-day you speak of 'a striped blazer of the boating club description.' A blazer is the red flannel boating jacket worn by the Lady Margaret, St. John's College, Cambridge, Boat Club. When I was at Cambridge it meant that and nothing else. It seems from your article that a blazer now means a coloured flannel jacket, whether for cricket, tennis, boating, or seaside wear."

The reefer jacket was of naval origin, and described the short double-breasted jacket worn by sailors in harsh weather, when they performed duties such as reefing the sails. It is descendants of this which are now commonly called blazers.

Style

Blazers, once commonly worn playing or attending traditional British sports, persist in the business casual wardrobe as a staple; they can be considered a jacket that can be worn as an alternative to the more formal suit jacket, but is not as informal as a sportcoat.

A traditional blazer is navy blue, with金属buttons (often bearing a crest). However, since the late 20th century blazers can be any color, and the buttons can be any type. Modern blazers often have non-metal buttons (plastic, horn, leather, or covered with the jacket fabric).

Single-breasted blazers may have one, two, three, or four buttons; four is unusual. Double-breasted blazers usually have six buttons in two columns of three.