How To Layer For Autumn

A good layering system starts closest to the body, so it's always wise to have a good stock of cotton tees that can peep out of quarter zips, cardigans and lightweight jackets. Plain colours, a couple of striped options, and you're good. The main consideration though is shirts and this season's shirt collection is built with layering in mind. The Brook Shirt in McKenzie Blue is a great place to start - a soft premium cotton in a rich blue tone with a timeless button-down collar, equally at home under a blazer for work or worn open over a T-shirt when off-duty. For texture, the Atlanta Shirt in Newson Cord Indigo Blue Rinse brings a smooth micro-wale corduroy in a loose, nonchalant cut, while the Corby Shirt in Mullins Denim Indigo Light does something similar in an organic cotton denim, finished with two welted chest pockets and contrast buttons for a workwear-inspired Americana edge.

Overshirts are an autumn godsend, posing as a shirt/jacket hybrid, and built to be worn open, as a mid-layer, or buttoned up on their own. The Mulvey Shirt in Ennis Brown takes a bold brown plaid and cuts it roomier through the body, with a hidden contrast placket and welt pocket, designed to sit as easily over a white tee as beneath a crew-neck jumper. The Penryn Shirt in Marcie Maroon leans further into workwear heritage with its twin chest patch pockets and curved hem, cut loose in a rich maroon organic cotton. And the New York Special in Orton Black Multi - one of our most enduringly popular shirt styles - returns in a black multi-stripe with a spear collar and contrast-button cuffs, built to pair with tailored jackets as readily as denim.

The Soft Layer: Jersey

Jersey is the layer that does the unglamorous but essential job of regulating temperature without adding bulk. The Mersey Long Sleeve Polo anchors this category in a heavy 300gsm organic cotton, available in a rich Parton Maroon or an indigo-dyed Hickman Indigo Rinse, each with a three-button placket and same-tone stitching designed to sit under a tailored jacket. For the days that call for something more substantial, the Harrison Jersey Jacket in Lester Indigo occupies the useful middle ground "when a tailored jacket reads too formal and outerwear feels like overkill". It's a double-zip technical cotton blouson with elasticated, sport-striped cuffs deliberately positioned to pick up indigo dye bleed, so each jacket develops its own patina over time. The Lorimer Half Zip Sweatshirt in Harker Brown rounds out the category with a preppy spread collar and chest patch pocket, splitting the difference between sportswear ease and a more considered silhouette.

The Insulating Layer: Knitwear

This is where autumn really earns its keep, and where the collection's two key yarns come into their own. Brady - a brushed 30% alpaca, 22% virgin wool blend - runs through three of this season's signature knits. The Graves V Neck Vest is the layering piece proper: a sleeveless knit built to sit cleanly over a shirt or tee without adding bulk, offered in brown, green, purple and the striped Flynn Multi. The same Brady yarn appears in the Caradale Cardigan, a collarless, button-through knit that nods to 1950s collegiate style, currently running in brown and green, and in the perennial Blenheim Jumper, a double-knit, ribbed-neck crew-neck with elasticated cuffs and waist.

Sitting apart from the Brady family, the Hawes V Neck Jumper is cut from a fine 100% extrafine wool with contrast beige tipping at the neck, cuffs and waist - a quietly Ivy League detail, offered in Colvin Black and Colvin Charcoal. And for the days that call for something lighter, the ribbed 100% organic cotton Eversley knits offer a gentler transitional weight: the Blenheim Jumper in Navy or Sand, and its collared companion, the Pablo Knitted Polo, both built for transitional layering, seeing you right through autumn and winter.

The Outer Layer

Every layering system is only as good as what it's protecting you from, and this is where the outerwear collection does its heaviest lifting, much of it borrowing, quite literally, from uniforms designed for far harsher conditions than a British autumn. Take the flying jacket. The sheepskin-lined B-3, standardised by the USAAF in 1934 and modelled on Leslie Irvin's original 1920s design for the RAF, was built to keep bomber crews alive at altitudes where the air itself could reach -50°C. You won't need that level of protection on Lamb's Conduit Street, but the instinct to layer up against genuine cold runs straight through to our Heath Field Jacket in Oates Black, a treated, water-repellent cotton in a classic field-jacket cut with four patch pockets, built to replace summer linen the moment the weather turns. The Renbourne Bomber Jacket in Thackray Oatmeal Multi keeps the compact, MA-1-inspired body of the classic bomber but trades nylon for a rich autumnal plaid in 100% pure new wool, finished with a double-zip and spear collar that reads smarter than the original ever did.

For proper cold, we turn to the coats. The Lothian Coat is modelled on the traditional Austrian loden, a cloth first developed in the Alps, where wool was fulled rather than simply woven to make it naturally water-resistant against mountain weather. Our version comes in a brown houndstooth wool-cotton blend, Hepple Brown, or a technical weatherproof cotton in Marling Khaki and Marling Graphite, each cut with a rear dart and raglan sleeve so the coat moves rather than sits stiff. At the heaviest end sits the Big Coat in Morgan Green, a belted, double-breasted overcoat in 100% pure new wool built as the last word in winter protection.

Then there's the working end of the range - jackets built on the DNA of the chore coat and the western jacket, cut shorter and worn harder. The Addington Jacket in Roderick Twill Black splits the difference between bomber and chore jacket in a minimalist cotton twill; the Witley Jacket in Hester Beige takes its four-pocket, spear-collar shape from the classic western jacket in a soft, sulphur-dyed cotton twill; and the Camberwell Jacket in Ivers Cord Navy reworks the workwear jacket in an unstructured, tailoring-inflected navy corduroy with a slim notch lapel. The Kennard Jacket brings the chore jacket right up to date in a water-repellent cotton blend, in Marling Khaki or Marling Graphite, designed to be worn over tees, knits or shirts as the season's do-it-all transitional layer.

Finishing Touches: Hats and Scarves

No layering system is complete without covering the extremities, and the new accessories collection takes its cues from the same utilitarian wardrobe as the outerwear. The Flight Hat is new this season - a modern reinterpretation of the classic RAF B3 aviator hat - with three wool-lined panels that fold up or down depending on how the wind is behaving, available across nine colourways from cotton corduroy to pure new wool. For softer weather, the baseball cap collection runs to fourteen styles, several of them - such as the Cap Marin Ecru - cut from end-of-roll surplus cloth.

For proper cold, the Fisher Hat picks up a much older tradition - the rib-knit watch cap first worn by North Atlantic fishermen in the seventeenth century, designed to sit high above the ears so as not to muffle hearing on deck. Ours comes in a wool-polyamide rib or in the same soft Brady alpaca-and-wool blend used across the knitwear. The Soane scarf collection follows the same logic, in extrafine wool or the matching Brady blend, so hat and scarf can be worn as a considered set rather than an afterthought.

Building The System

None of this needs to happen in one go. A layering wardrobe is built the way the season itself arrives — one piece at a time, as the weather demands it. Start with a shirt and a jersey base, add a knit when the mornings turn properly cold, and finish with an outer layer built for whatever the wind throws at you. That's the whole idea behind autumn dressing done properly: not a single coat to solve every day, but a system flexible enough to meet the day as it comes.