The other thing I struggle with is my rain jacket. It is just too tight with my sweater underneath. It's a nice jacket, I just wish it had a little more chest room.
As on the other thread:
layering does mean that the outermost layers are bought extra large and loose
A rain jacket and rain pants constitute my outermost layer, so in cool camp weather there may be long underwear, a shirt, a fleece top and a down (synth) vest on my torso below. My rain jackets have always been bought one size up, which leads to
other peculiar design, fit and flexibility criteria.
Jackets bought oversized the sleeve length becomes an issue ; I’d kinda like my hands to stick out the end of the sleeve, not be encased just below the elbow patches while I flap my arms like a seal. So some effective way to tighten the sleeve at the wrist is needed.
I am not a fan of Velcro on clothing, but in that application Velcro wrist tighteners are hard to beat for easy adjustability. The current rain jacket has a Velcro outer sleeve, and an elastic cuff on a doubled, inner sleeve end. Really nice design touch that helps keep things in place if you pull the sleeve up to wash dishes or bail a boat, and doubly keeps water from running down your arm inside the rain jacket when reaching up to adjust a ridgeline knot or shoulder a canoe.
Warm dry clothes and, crap, a pint of water just ran down my arm inside the rain jacket sleeve.
I want a couple outside pockets on the jacket, with flaps and pocket openings design positioned so they don’t collect water running down the jacket. And no Velcro on the pocket flaps please, sticking my Velcro’ed sleeve cuff into a Velcro’ed pocket flap gets caught up in a design oversight.
The other one is more personal peccadillo peculiar, a design criteria that is a bedeviling nuisance for me.
I don’t like wearing a hood, most often just a wide-brimmed rain hat. But I will throw the hood up at times, and would prefer if I could just tuck it down behind the collar behind my neck when not in use, so it hasn’t collected a bucket of rainwater when I suddenly throw it on. The tricky little zippered hood compartments don’t work well on the fly, have to take the jacket off to stuff the hood back and rezip.
And, most hood peculiarly, I hate turning my head to look at that thing rustling in the bush to find that I have a great, close up view of the GoreTex inside the hood, so the cut and fit of the hood becomes an issue.
Of course that is a one-size too large hood, but seriously, hoods should have a bit of side scallop around the eye sockets for peripheral vision.
Which, as usual, is a very long way of saying that when I need to replace a rain jacket (at least every 4 – 5 years, I live in them) I have no choice but to make the longish drive to a brick and mortar vendor or two with a good selection to try on and inspect.
The last rain jacket took a long time to buy. I found some that were near perfection.
And $350; pffftttt, never happening.
