The holidays exit through the back door. Decor is quietly packed up. The tree gets dragged to the dumpsters. Twinkle lights unplugged until next year. January slips in the front while I’m vacuuming up the last of the pine needles. Didn’t even hear it come in.
What’s left after the holidays is gray. On the sidewalks. In the sky. Inside your head, if you’re not careful.
It was one of those days last weekend. Spit rain. No sun. The kind of weather that fully commits to damp. My wife and I were walking to a movie. Is This Thing On? felt like an uncomfortably accurate title.
But this is a happy story, believe it or not. Because that was the first day I wore my Baxter Wood Trawler Raincoat.
The coat is yellow. Bright, honest yellow.
This is not a color I’m known for. I live in blacks and grays and navies. (See: the rest of my outfit.) Safe tones. Sensible choices. Which is exactly why this coat works so well for me. I can’t put it on without smiling a little. I feel slightly sillier than my average self in it. Lighter. And it only gets put on when the weather is already a frown.
It doesn’t fight the gray. It interrupts it with wit. Like a private joke between you and the weather. “Bring your own sunshine,” the gray tells me. And I put on my Baxter Wood jacket, two birds up.
“I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.” —Charlie Chaplin
The inside is where the real surprise lives.
Most raincoats feel like a negotiation. You put them on knowing you’ll sweat a little. That the price of staying dry is swampy discomfort. It’s why I haven’t owned a raincoat in years. I’d rather be rain-wet than sweat-wet.
But this isn’t that.
The interior is buttery smooth. Soft enough that it wears like a sweater. I can’t stress this enough. It wears like a sweater. No stick. No trap. You forget it’s there, which is the highest compliment I can give anything in this category.
It’s the difference between bracing for the weather and simply continuing on with your day.
This is a close up of that buttery interior I was raving about.
A quick housekeeping note while we’re here. The close-up photos were taken back at my apartment on my iPhone. I should say this plainly. The color doesn’t look true in those shots. I don’t know. I’m not a professional photographer. Reference the outdoor photos for color.
Moving on.
The hardware is metal. Which shouldn’t be notable. But it is. There’s a seriousness to its quality. Weight where weight matters. Nothing pretending to be something it’s not. You feel it when you button the coat. A small, tactile confirmation that someone was paying attention when they made it.
It all feels considered. As if the designers kept asking a single question—does this earn its place?—and removed everything that didn’t.
The pockets are right. That’s the only word for them. They sit where your hands naturally go. They hold what you actually carry. Phone. Keys. Wallet. Nothing bunches. Nothing pulls. No unnecessary theatrics. Goes without saying, but it’s fully waterproof. So aforementioned edc stays dry.
Fit matters. Always. Especially to me.
I’m 5’10” (and a half, not to be that guy, but details matter when you’re talking proportions). And my build is aggressively average. I wear a small. I also tried the medium when I met the designer and founder at Renegade in Chicago back in December. The medium worked. The small worked better. Cleaner. More intentional. My wife has been nudging me toward smaller sizes for a while now. I’m finally listening. She was right. Again.
Sensibility runs through the entire coat.
Everything here feels decided. Not added. Not layered on in the name of options or features. Just correctly chosen. The length is exactly what it should be. The structure does its job and then gets out of the way. It’s the kind of design that assumes you’re smart enough to notice and polite enough not to talk about it. Quiet luxury, I think the internet calls this?
We finished the walk. The movie started. The rain kept doing its thing.
And so did I.
