The Featherweight Jacket That’s Gotten Me Through Winter

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I moved to New York in 2015 from California. I needed a coat for my first big boy East Coast winter, and fell in love with one from Uniqlo’s first collaboration with Christophe Lemaire. It kept me very warm.

Somewhere in between the winter of 2015 and the winter of 2016, I hastily took the jacket off and dropped it on a lit candle. The lapels are now singed beyond repair, as is my heart. So I started this winter wearing another Uniqlo coat: the Ultra Light Down Jacket (currently on sale for $59).

It really is that light, but more impressively, I discovered over the past couple months — through snowstorms, polar vortexes, and bitter winds — that it keeps me really warm despite being paper thin. I started wearing it in the early stages of winter, and planned to get something heavier once we got deeper into December and January. But I didn’t need to. Even in single-digit temperatures I’ve worn it with just a sweater underneath and didn’t feel like I was going to die. In my approximation, that’s a pretty outstanding accomplishment for a jacket that I can bunch into a grapefruit-sized ball.