The 22/85 Wool Shirt Jacket

This Friday, we’re releasing a new AP Original: the 22/85 Wool Shirt Jacket. Our first original wool garment, it stands out for a number of reasons. Let us walk you through it.

The Garment

The 22/85 is the culmination of 2–3 years of prototyping, material sourcing, and development. It was the first project we began after the McGrath Bomber Jacket.

Its design draws inspiration from vintage wool shirt jackets of the 1940s to 1960s, when heavier wool garments were commonly used as winter workwear.

Features include two waist pockets, ideal for storing gloves and warming your hands, two button-flap chest pockets (the source of our manufacturing challenges), and a full button-up front. We also incorporated surplus Flecktarn fabric, sourced from Grade 2 shelter halves, to reinforce the collar, cuffs, and undersides of the chest pockets.

The Materials

As we quickly learned, finding USA-made wool isn’t easy. Thanks to Michael at The Iron Snail, we were introduced to the American Woolen Company, a remarkable mill based in Connecticut. They’re one of fewer than a dozen fully operational woolen mills left in the U.S., and one of the even fewer that still accepts custom orders.

Once we discovered American Woolen, we knew we had to work with them on this project. With American manufacturing central to our ethos, it only made sense to produce the fabric here as well. Their mill handles everything in-house, from sourcing raw wool to spinning yarn, weaving fabric, and finishing the final product.

We chose a 22-ounce fabric composed of 85% wool and 15% nylon. That’s where the 22/85 gets its name. The result is a fabric that’s exceptionally warm, relatively soft, and more durable thanks to the added nylon.

For the buttons, we selected corozo nut, a highly durable and sustainable material with a long history of use. Sourced from South and Central America, corozo has been used in everything from jewelry and toys to buttons and even gas mask filters during World War I. It’s robust, plastic-free, and valued for its natural strength and versatility.

The only other material used in the jacket is surplus Flecktarn camouflage, sourced from Grade 2 shelter halves. This fabric adds structure and comfort. You’ll find it beneath the pocket flaps, inside the cuffs, and along the collar.

The Process

The 22/85 took nearly two years to bring to life. It began with developing and ordering the fabric. Due to supply chain constraints and the fully in-house production process at the American Woolen Company, lead times can be significant, but the result is well worth the wait.

Once the fabric was ready, we sent it to our cut-and-sew manufacturer in Garland, Texas. Working with material this thick and heavy presented real challenges, and we learned a great deal throughout the process.

When the first run arrived at our Wisconsin warehouse, we were excited to bring the jacket to market. However, we identified a few issues during inspection.

Due to the weight and structure of the fabric, some pocket flaps had been sewn incorrectly, resulting in inconsistent placement. While some pieces were perfect, others sat slightly too high or misaligned, creating an uneven appearance that didn’t meet our standards.

We made the decision to send the entire batch back to be corrected. Each errant pocket flap was carefully removed and re-sewn to ensure proper alignment. While this delayed the release into spring, it was necessary to uphold the quality we expect from our USA-made garments.

We also found that the grading for larger sizes ran slimmer than intended, resulting in a closer fit for XL and XXL. While this couldn’t be addressed during the repair process, it will be corrected in the next production run.

Thanks to your support, and the work of American Woolen and our partners in Garland, the 22/85 Wool Shirt Jacket is now available at Americana Pipedream.

Thank you for reading.