Eight jackets, $80 to $1,800

Jacket pricing is the least legible part of menswear. A waxed cotton jacket can cost $158 or $460 and the difference is not obviously visible at ten feet, which is where most people will see it. So here is this month's crop arranged by the only axis that is honest, from cheapest to most expensive, with what each price actually buys.

The pattern, once you line them up, is that the money goes into three things and only three: the fabric, the country it was sewn in, and the name on the label. Below about $200 you are buying a competent jacket. Between $200 and $700 you are buying better cloth and a better cut. Above $700 you are buying leather that takes years, or a name.

Uniqlo Unisex Utility Jacket $80

A military field jacket silhouette, roomy, drawstring waist. It is the control in this experiment, and everything above it has to justify itself against this.

Patagonia Nano Puff Jacket $114

Reduced from $229. A synthetic insulator that packs to nothing and works wet, which down does not. At half price it is the easiest purchase here.

Flint and Tinder Dry Wax Trucker Jacket $158

Reduced from $198. Dry wax rather than oiled, so it is not tacky to the touch and it still sheds rain. The sensible person's waxed jacket.

J.Crew 1983 Barn Jacket $188

A reissue of a specific year, which tells you the entire commercial logic of J.Crew in one product name.

Barbour Icons Patch Bedale $460

Patchwork needlecord and waxed cotton on a jacket whose appeal is that it never changes. Deliberately divisive. Re-waxable, which is the point.

RRL Corduroy-Collar Cotton Deck Jacket $690

Ralph Lauren's archive-mining line doing the thing it does well: a 1940s deck jacket built properly, priced as though the 1940s never ended.

Aimé Leon Dore Rain Delay Jacket $695

Waterproofing was solved in 1985. The other $515 buys silhouette and cultural position, sold to people who know that and want it anyway.

Schott N.Y.C. P633SH Horween Horsehide Perfecto $1,800

Horsehide, not cowhide: stiffer, denser, miserable for three months and then yours for thirty years. The only jacket here with a real argument for the top price.

If you are buying one jacket this season, buy the Flint and Tinder at $158 and stop reading. If you are buying the last jacket you will ever buy, buy the Schott, and be honest with yourself about the first winter.