From streetwear to high fashion: why the puffer jacket is still a sign of the times

If West End Girl, Lily Allen’s first album for seven years, which details the breakdown of her relationship has occupied the minds of music critics and marriage counsellors, fashion watchers have spotted something different.

The puffer jacket Allen is wearing on the cover is not just a pop of colour in what may become an iconic album cover, it is also a sign of the times – underlining just how ubiquitous this jacket shape has become as winter arrives each year.

Uniqlo says a £109 puffer jacket is a bestseller, and the streetwear brand Palace has released a puffer beanie. Puffer jackets can also be found in K Pop Demon Hunters – where dancer Mira wears a puffer homage to André Leon Talley’s famous “sleeping bag” coat to the Met Gala – and on Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in an advert for Moncler.

They are on the red carpet, too – worn by Jeff Goldblum recently. If, two years ago, John Lewis attempted to call time on this decade’s love of the puffer – “we are moving away from the puffer to the smart coat”, its fashion director Queralt Ferrer told the Guardian – it remains a cold weather go-to.

Allen’s puffer is depicted by the Spanish artist Nieves González. She regularly features the clothing item in her paintings, which use influences from 16th- and 17th-century portraiture updated to now. She says the puffer jacket works because it is “an intensely contemporary object. [When] placed within a compositional structure drawn from traditional painting, [it] creates that productive tension I’m interested in”.

Prof Andrew Groves, the director of the Menswear Archive at Westminster University, recently hosted Expedition Club, an exhibition of puffers owned by Shigeru Kaneko, the chief buyer at Japanese department store Beams. He says the puffer “has always signalled protection and privilege”.

Its beginnings date back to 1936 and Eddie Bauer’s Skyliner, which he designed after nearly dying from hypothermia. The puffer became a fashion item in the 1990s, when it was adopted by brands such as Prada Sport and Helmut Lang. Football managers also had a hand in its massification.

“[Arsène Wenger’s] parka projected composure and command under scrutiny, translating the puffer’s original symbolism of mastering nature into the spectacle of mastering men,” says Groves. That’s even with the fact that, as football fans noticed, Wenger had a lot of trouble zipping his up.

The demand for puffer jackets has increased the focus on the down industry. Puffers were traditionally kept puffy with feathers that were often unethically pulled from geese. The shell is often made from polyester, which takes years to biodegrade. Brands have endeavoured to create a less damaging puffer.

Pangaia uses recycled nylon in their designs and Flwrdwn uses a patented fabric that uses wildflowers and a corn biopolymer, instead of down. The biomaterials company Ponda, meanwhile, has developed BioPuff, a fabric made from bulrush cattail plants grown in wetlands. As well as providing an alternative to down, it helps capture carbon and supports biodiversity.

Its co-founder Neloufar Taheri says part of the development of BioPuff was inspired by the popularity of the puffer. “It is such a statement piece in pop culture and streetwear,” she says. “Just by changing the inside of the jacket, the part you don’t even see, you can massively reduce your environmental impact.”

Orsola de Castro, co-founder of the sustainable fashion consultancy Estethica, says wearing puffers for longer is also a way to do this. She advises sponge cleaning a jacket rather than washing it, and working with menders to keep it in good condition. “Your classic puffer jacket is a fairly well-designed object in the sense that it lasts, it is warm,” she argues. “It has a huge potential to be worn on and on.”

The everyday-ness of the puffer is part of why Allen’s album portrait has struck a chord, says González. “I think people connect with the visual honesty. It’s not a glamorous, red-carpet Lily Allen, but a real Lily, in her element. The puffer jacket has especially resonated because we all have one, we’ve all worn one. It’s a democratic object that transcends social classes.”