Barbour Icons Patch Bedale

Barbour has taken the Bedale, its shorter riding jacket and the one most people actually want, and built the outer from patchwork: needlecord, plain waxed cotton and tartan waxed cotton, stitched into panels. The lining is the house tartan. The whole outer is 100% waxed cotton and re-waxable, which is the specification to buy on. The jacket costs $460.

Patchwork is a risk on a coat whose appeal is that it looks the same in 2026 as it did in 1980. The Bedale is bought by people who would rather not be looked at. Cutting it into panels is the opposite of that, and a fair number of Barbour customers will find this version faintly appalling, which is presumably why it sits in a line called Icons.

Re-waxable keeps it honest. A waxed jacket is maintained rather than replaced. You re-wax it every year or two, it darkens and softens and marks, and after a decade it looks like it has a biography. That is as true of this one as of the plain one. The panels will age at different rates, which sounds like a defect and will turn out to be the best thing about it.

Buy it a size down from your instinct. Everybody gets this wrong.