Pioneer Camp Fleece Jackets

What separates two fleeces that look identical in a photograph is the face and the weight. Polar fleece is brushed on both sides: warm for the money, easy to wear, and the heaviest of them here is a 400 gsm cloth that blocks a fair amount of wind on its own. Grid fleece is the technical one: the inside is a lattice of raised squares with channels between them, so it traps air in the squares and lets damp air out through the channels, and it is thinner across the shoulder than a polar fleece of the same warmth. That thinness is the whole point: it is the fleece that goes under a shell.

Sherpa is the third face, a deep curled pile that is the warmest thing on the shelf and the least good at being a layer, so the sherpa pieces are cut and sold as jackets. The knit sweaters and the one cotton cardigan sit apart from all of it: they are clothing rather than kit, warm enough for a cold room and a walk to a car. Fleece asks very little in the wash and one thing in particular: no fabric softener, because it coats the fibres and flattens the pile. Sizes run S to 3XL.