Woolly Clothing CoMen's 100% Merino Fleece Jacket By Woolly | RWS Certified | Soft Weather-Ready Warmth, Seattle Designed

Shipping was fast, product as described, nice and warm also.

The Woolly Clothing Co Men’s 100% Merino Fleece Zip Hoodie in Sand with Charcoal Panels is a remarkable blend of comfort, functionality, and stylish design. This hoodie is an excellent choice for those seeking a versatile and reliable piece of clothing that can handle various weather conditions while keeping you comfortable and looking great.Design and Appearance:The Merino fleece zip hoodie features a sophisticated sand color complemented by stylish charcoal panels, creating a modern and understated look. The contrast between the sand and charcoal adds visual interest and a touch of contemporary flair. The design is sleek and versatile, making it suitable for both outdoor adventures and casual outings. The hoodie’s classic fit and thoughtful detailing, such as the quality zippers and well-placed pockets, make it a practical and stylish addition to any wardrobe.Comfort and Fit:Comfort is a standout feature of this hoodie. The 100% Merino fleece material is incredibly soft and gentle against the skin, providing a luxurious feel that is perfect for all-day wear. The medium size offers a comfortable fit that accommodates a range of body types, ensuring a cozy and snug experience without feeling too tight or restrictive. The hoodie’s ergonomic design allows for easy movement, making it ideal for various activities, from hiking to lounging at home.Functionality and Features:This hoodie is designed with functionality in mind. The Merino fleece material offers excellent thermal regulation, keeping you warm in cooler weather while remaining breathable and comfortable in milder conditions. The weather-resistant panels provide added protection against wind and light rain, making this hoodie a reliable choice for unpredictable weather. The zippered pockets are a practical feature, allowing you to securely store essentials like your phone, keys, or wallet while on the go. The full-length zipper makes it easy to put on and take off, and the adjustable hood provides additional protection and comfort.Quality and Durability:The quality of the Woolly Clothing Co Merino fleece hoodie is exceptional. The Merino wool is naturally resistant to odors and stains, ensuring that the hoodie stays fresh and clean with minimal maintenance. The material is also highly durable, withstanding regular wear and washing without losing its shape or softness. The weather-resistant panels are well-integrated and offer long-lasting protection against the elements. The craftsmanship is evident in the sturdy stitching and high-quality zippers, ensuring that the hoodie maintains its appearance and functionality over time.Performance and Versatility:This hoodie is a versatile piece that performs well in various conditions and activities. Whether you’re heading out for a hike, running errands, or simply relaxing at home, the Merino fleece material provides the perfect balance of warmth and breathability. The weather-resistant panels make it a reliable choice for outdoor adventures, while the stylish design ensures it looks great in more casual settings. The hoodie’s versatility and performance make it a valuable addition to any wardrobe, offering both practicality and style.Maintenance and Care:Maintaining the Woolly Clothing Co Merino fleece hoodie is simple and straightforward. The Merino wool’s natural resistance to odors and stains reduces the need for frequent washing, and the material is easy to clean when necessary. The hoodie can be machine washed on a gentle cycle and air-dried, maintaining its softness and shape even after multiple washes. The durable construction ensures that it remains a reliable and stylish piece for years to come.Final Thoughts:The Woolly Clothing Co Men’s 100% Merino Fleece Zip Hoodie in Sand with Charcoal Panels is an outstanding choice for those seeking a comfortable, functional, and stylish piece of clothing. Its soft Merino fleece material, weather-resistant features, and versatile design make it a perfect companion for various activities and weather conditions. Whether you’re exploring the outdoors or enjoying a casual day out, this hoodie offers the perfect blend of comfort and functionality. Its high-quality construction and timeless design ensure that it will be a cherished addition to your wardrobe, providing reliable performance and stylish appeal.

*Review Updated*This heavyweight is an excellent casual non-technical wool garment. With a practical design and contemporary styling. Like a slim down and simplified FirstSpear Technical Woobie. It doesn't match the performance or fabric sophistication of high end technical apparel, but it's still a strong performer at a competitive price point for everyday around town use. *Edit: wind resistance isn't great, worse than contemporary fleece options, but wet weather resistance is surprisingly good for a garment of this type. It's no replacement for a rain shell, but as good everyday rain resistance.* I find that it's better suited as an urban outer layer but it also works reasonably well as a mid layer if you could accommodate the hood. As of writing, the size chart is not shown on the Amazon product listing, but it can be found on Woolly's website. I found the garment to be true to the size chart. Do note that the sleeves and torso run longer than I prefer. I like that it's a locally based company. But I have concerns about the brand's truthfulness. Woolly engages in many practices that are often used by brands who want to mislead their customers. They are on my professional communities unofficial list of brands to be careful of because of false claims. The product listing on here and on their website contains many ambiguous and misleading terminology. As only a few people will likely care about this, I have not penalized the star rating because of it. I do legitimately like the garment, but I do feel like I have an obligation to discuss these concerns so customers can make an informed decision about whether or not this is the brand that they want to do business with.As an outdoor/survival instructor, K9 handler, and consultant, who works at the intersection of the outdoor rec, hunting, and defense industries I absolutely adore wool garments. Wool is a very versatile fabric that is able to meet many of my unique equipment requirements. I've had a lot of opportunities to play around and even T&E high end wool garments from some of the big-name brands as well as some of the smaller custom boutique options. Weatherwool being a particular highlight. And in my capacity as a Vine reviewer, I've had a chance to try out some intriguing and surprisingly well performing budget options. I would classify this particular garment from Woolly as mid-range and non-technical. For everyday, around the town, and around the house use.Deceptive and outright false marketing and claims about wool apparel are very common. Much to any wool enthusiast frustration. Some brands will claim a garment is 100% wool, which is true of one part of the garment like the outer shell, but failed to disclose that the lining is synthetic (Filson). Or will overemphasize that the garment is wool, when the actual content is in the low teens with the majority being synthetics (Triple Aught Design, Arc'teryx, and many others). Some will initially ship a garment with high quality wool fabric to early purchasers and product reviewers and then switch to a lesser quality fabric for later production models without disclosure of the changes. When doing research for this review, I asked my PNW based professional circle if anyone had tried Woolly's apparel before. Those who had, had positive things to say about Woolly's early garments, but were less positive about the brand. With several saying that the specs on the product pages did not match the garments they received. With a few cases of my colleagues ordering a garment when it was first released, liking it so much that they decided to purchase more at a later date, and finding that their new garment of the same model has notably inferior fabrics when compared to their originals. Some degree of change is inevitable and most of the time this is inconsequential to the customer. It doesn't matter if a brand changes to a different model of zipper because of supply chain issues for example. But changing to an inferior fabric without disclosure is a different situation. Many shrugged it off, but a few that did reach out to customer support. They were informed that Woolly just forgot to update the product listing with the new information. Which is possible, they are a small brand operating out of a space behind a few residential houses in Seattle. It's not inherently malicious or deceptive. But it's happened a few times. Even if the failure to update the listing is innocent, it does raise a lot of questions about the accuracy of a product listing at any given time. I will note to Woolly's credit that all the garments that my colleagues had trouble with have since had their descriptions updated to reflect the changes that they have identified. More broadly, there is a suspicion within my community that Woolly's 100% wool claims are bogus. That they're not disclosing the use of poly-wool blends or poly liners or other synthetic elements. With further information about their fabric being fairly sparse and non-specific.Some may reasonably say that it's not fair to hold past issues (especially not ones that happened to me personally) against this product. That's why I chose not to penalize the star rating. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have brought it up, or made much less of a deal about it. But I do feel it's relevant because of some of the terminology used. Woolly specifically describes this garment as a Merino Fleece and in a few locations, say it's made from 100% Merino Fleece, also claiming it's made from 100% Merino wool. The tag on the garment says it's 100% Merino wool. Fleece is a specific family of fabrics, all of which are by definition synthetics made from polyester. A garment cannot be 100% Merino wool and be a fleece. Many brands do have apparel lines that they describe as Merino fleece, wool fleece, or variations thereof. But in the dozens of brands that looked at for research, all of them disclose that it's because they're using a wool blend or dual/multilayer fabric with a synthetic. Others who don't use the Merino fleece terminology, but are trying to ship garments in the typical fleece mid layer niche will say that the lining is wool but brushed to resemble fleece. And I'm unsure if the fabric composition of the garment and the NatureDry panels are a blend, dual layer or legitimately 100% wool brush to resemble fleece. I hope for the latter, without more specifics we can't know for sure given how common deception is in the wool space. *Edit: Woolly through the Amazon seller notification system confirmed that it's 100% Merino wool brushed to resemble fleece. They also confirmed that NatureDry is also 100% Merino wool and gave a brief summary of how they achieved the tight water resistant weave.* My concerns about the fabric composition and terminology came before my concerns about the brand's truthfulness. I wanted to learn more about the fabric composition out of genuine curiosity. I may be a wool enthusiast, but I'm not a wool purist. I like blends and dual layers and feel that they are the future of technical apparel. But I want to know that ahead of time so I can make an informed choice. I found that any information about the fabrics was fairly sparse and unspecific, which is why I dug deeper and asked my peers for any experiences that they've had with the brand. Which now throws any of the claims in the marketing copy into doubt. *Edit: Still have concerns, but it's mostly about if the information on the product page accurately reflects the shipped garment.* *Edit2: Woolly is notably dodging questions about the current GSM and whether or not it's accurate*But let's leave that aside for now and actually discuss the garment. This hoodie is in the style of what I like to refer to as the reinforced fleece. I've largely cut out all of my fleece, but this is a style of fleece I'm quite fond of because it's a solid performer and has a really good look. The idea is simple, a fleece jacket or hoodie with hard face panel reinforcements in high wear areas or places where more wet weather resistance is necessary. So hood, shoulders, upper back/chest and sometimes elbows. Now you have a garment that is resistant to damage from backpack, chest rig, and body armor straps, has an easy way to slip in an upper chest admin pocket, and has better water resistance in areas that are most likely to get wet, even when worn as a mid layer. Additionally, as the panels do change the breathability and thermal regulation properties of the garment it can allow for interesting ways to regulate heat, such as options that have heavily insulated upper chest and arms but cooling torsos. This Woolly zip hoodie has the reinforced panels on the hood and in a narrow band (excluding the extension for the chest pocket) around the shoulders but omits elbow reinforcements. So you have some increased weather resistance but the majority of the garment benefits from the soft face wool.One of my biggest gripes for an otherwise good garment is the hood. If it was my choice I would have preferred this garment was offered without the hood. I have a lot of hooded garments and I'm tired of hood stacking when layering. But hoods have their advantages and it does make this hoodie a much better performer when used as an outer layer. Which is why I'm a little disappointed about the hood design. It's one of the many examples of why this garment is a casual everyday jacket and not a technical one. It's an undersized non-adjustable, 2 panel design. As a non-technical garment it's not surprising that it doesn't have a helmet compatible hood. Which is a good thing, I like helmet compatible hoods but for everyday use it can be a lot of material that you need to adjust with a complex series of drawstrings or have said said drawstrings create pressure points under equipment or bounce around uncomfortably. But Woolly went a little too far with the hood. It's undersized. It can be comfortably worn fully zipped up if you don't have anything on your head, but throw on ear protection (or earphones) or even a watch cap and it's too small. Even long hair might cause issues. Making it bigger with a more conventional size with adjustable drawstrings to tailor the fit would make this a more versatile garment that could more comfortably accommodate head worn equipment and apparel. The heavyweight wool plus the Naturedry hard panel does also make it quite thick when stowed. The hood uses a 2 panel design, a simple hood that is cheaper to make. It's not as comfortable, doesn't have as much freedom of head movement, or fold down as flat as 3 or 5 panel designs. The lack of flat fold down is a comfort issue if this garment is used as a mid layer. If I'm going to have a hood, I want it to be a good one. But in Woolly's defense there are plenty of examples of high-end garments that still use the 2 panel design. The FirstSpear Tech Woobie, which the Woolly Hoodie has a strong resemblance to, has a 2 panel hood, but is helmet compatible, adjustable, and on a garment that's designed to be outerwear. As are most quality offerings that still use the 2 panel. There's also the possibility that the adjustability was excluded because they couldn't find a good non-synthetic cordage for the adjustment system. If Woolly were to design a 2.0 version of this hoodie, my top suggestion would be redesigned the hood.The shoulders are also interesting. The garment uses a traditional and cheaper set in sleeve style. I prefer the raglan style sleeve because I feel like it's more comfortable has less pressure points and allows for more freedom of movement. But when executed well, going with the set in isn't that big of a deal. In this case it's a bit of a mixed bag. The shoulders are true to size and have a good sized and comfortable armhole. There are no shoulder gaskets, but there's enough fabric and scratch that the shoulders do not restrict freedom of movement. Where we run into trouble is the top seam. This scene can cause an uncomfortable pressure point on the collarbone when wearing a heavy backpack, chest rig or body armor. Which is why a lot of brands either offset it, go with raglan which does not have the seam, or use the more comfortable flatlock stitch because it lies flatter. Flatlocks are used on the arm holes (and a small number of other places) but not on the top seam and the reinforced NaturalDry doesn't wrap over the top of the seam. So you end up with an extra thick seam where 4 fabrics meet and are stitched together. Not everyone is prone to getting uncomfortable pressure points or hot spots in that area, but if you are you're much more likely to experience it with this garment.The garment uses excellent quality YKK zippers and actually uses them appropriately. They also have an unusual and good quality zipper slider. It looks to be a locking slider with a stay down puller. You can flip the zipper pull up or down and it will stay put in that orientation. And if you prefer to wear your jacket half zipped or quarter zipped, the zipper slider will stay in place. *Edit2: Having it be a locked zipper is good, but there's no real reason that it needs to stay down puller, even if it is cool* Both the admin pocket zipper and main zipper have zipper garages. The main zipper has a half storm flap that nicely folds into place and in my testing has not interfered with the smooth operation of the zipper. The storm flap and zipper garage make this a very comfortable garment to wear completely zipped up with or without the hood. But it should also be noted that both zippers use YKK zipper pulls. Historically Woolly has claimed that they use no plastics, even when it comes to their zipper hardware. The zipper pulls feel like glass filled nylon, but I was able to find a supplier with the specific zipper pull used (another local Seattle area company and likely where Woolly sourced their YKK zippers) describe it as rubber. Both of which contain plastics (rubber can be a naturally occurring polymer but most of the time it's vulcanized). It seems like they've toned down some of their no plastic claims from years past, but if you're purchasing for ideological reasons about plastic, just note that it might not be 100% true.The pocket layout is tried and true. One small inwardly facing admin pocket on the left upper chest. A pretty conventional choice for mid layers and a lot of casual and outdoor rec focused apparel where one might be zipping an outer layer to get to the pocket or be reaching over while wearing a backpack. Versus outwardly facing admin pockets for jackets warn underneath chest rigs or armor. The admin pocket is supposed to be cell phone sized. I don't have a particularly large phone by today's standards, and it doesn't come close to fitting. So stick to using it as a regular jacket admin pouch for small flat items. The zipper could also do with being about an inch longer. The two hand warmer pockets are really nicely done. They aren't zippered, or the largest or the deepest, but are warm and comfortable to stick your hands in. In a really well thought out detail, they have a fabric lip that provides some resistance to items falling out if you use your hand warmer pocket as a stash pocket. They won't retain items during a dead sprint, but for walking around, your keys and other items are likely to be safe. Having the pockets be zippered would be more versatile and certainly be a well-liked feature, but I'm not too broken up about it. I don't like keeping items in my hand warmer pockets other than my hands. *Edit: Forgot to mention that there are two internal pockets made from the hand warmer pockets.*The fabric is despite my concerns actually quite nice. The outer shell (both the hard panels and soft fabrics) has an almost silky high quality feel to them. With an attractive and tight knit on the soft exterior fabric. The hard NatureDry panels feel like really nice synthetic soft shell material. But are actually wool with a really tight weave in a process that as far as I'm aware is unique to Woolly. The interior is extremely soft and brushed. It feels a lot like Alpha fleece insulation. You should also be aware that this is a heavyweight jacket, even if the claimed 350 GSM turns out not to be true. It may be slimmer and smaller than my 600 ACM FirstSpear Technical Woobie, but it's at least as thick as an insulated soft shell if not a little thicker. It's also heavier than a soft shell, doesn't compress as well, and doesn't have the best wind resistance. It's serviceable for light wind but gusts will still permeate it with ease. Its wind resistance is inferior to Polartec Wind Pro and Hardface fleece fabrics. Yet another reason why it's better suited towards more in town and urban applications over being used in backcountry settings. *Edit: Wet weather resistance is a lot better than I expected. It's not a rain shell but the hard panels kept me nice and dry during a brief rainstorm. No water permeated down to my mid layer and the garment dried quickly. Still waiting for additional information about DWR coatings or lanolin treatments* *Edit2: It was confirmed no DWR or lanolin, but the fabric is treated with silicone to make it washable*The fit is true to the size chart. I would classify it as about midway between an athletic cut and a standard cut. And you get some fabric stretch for good freedom of movement and to accommodate layers, belt worn equipment, and PPE. My two big gripes with the fit are the arms and torso length. The arms are a little bit longer than my preference, terminating at around the mid hand level. I just like more adjustment or shorter arm so it doesn't restrict access to wrist worn equipment. Note that the cuffs do not have thumb holes, nor are they adjustable. They're also extra long and thick. The torso extends several inches past my waistline and seat. I prefer more of an athletic climber's cut, a short front that ends around waist level with a drop tail. This cut doesn't interfere with your belt kit but still protects your seat. But a longer torso is fine for non-technical applications like what this garment was designed for. I would just make sure to pull up the garment a little bit if you plan on sitting.The garment is currently offered in Charcoal and Sand with Charcoal NaturalDry panels. I'm a sucker for 2-tone so I debated long and hard about which version to get. But I found the Sand colorway to be much too bright and would get muddy and stained even in casual settings quite quickly. Think muddy dog paws. So keep that in mind when choosing a color. Hopefully Woolly adds more colorways in the near future. I'm hoping for a green.Overall I really like this hoodie. There are absolutely features that I want to see changed in future revisions. Roughly in order of importance, redesigned hood, better collarbone seams, and shorter torso cut. I would also like to see a more technical hoodless version. But the garment as a whole is well put together, comfortable to wear, and warm while thermal regulating well. If you're not trying to push it into technical applications then you have a really good outer layer for casual needs. Normal people would likely be quite happy with it. I look forward to wearing it around when I'm not in the backcountry for work. It's also genuinely a very attractive looking jacket. But Woolly's conduct could be better. If they make improvements on that front, I absolutely would be willing to make additional purchases with my own money, because I love my wool and I like the idea of supporting a local brand. I'm optimistic that they can earn back my trust in time. If that happens or if I get clarifying information about some of my concerns I will update accordingly. *Edit: They're late to answer, but Woolly has been answering my clarifying questions. But I shouldn't have to ask for these clarifying questions to begin with. They should be fully available on the product page.*

This is a great warm sweater for a chilly day. The merino wool breathes well, keeping me warm without making me sweat. Sleeves are nice and long and the material is soft and buttery to the touch. The front pocket has ample room for my hands and connects inside for hand warming. The sweater includes two outside breast pockets with hidden zippers for holding small items securely. The cost of this sweater seems exorbitant to me, but the quality is evident.