First Review: 5.11's Founder's Jacket
5.11 Tactical is a name long known for innovation, creating products that are suitable and comfortable for a wide variety of activities from recreational to fitness to professional. It’s not uncommon to see Executive Protection professionals, security professionals, on- and off-duty law enforcement and others wearing pants, shirts, hats, shoes or boots and more from 5.11. What we’ve never seen before now is a suit coat or blazer style jacket. Enter The 5.11 Founder's Jacket.
First displayed last year, the 5.11 Founder's Jacket has been specially designed for functional semi-formal wear. As with almost all of their apparel, the 5.11 Founder's Jacket was imagined and then designed, from conception to completion, with a balance of comfort, performance and appearance kept in focus.
Perhaps the greatest convenience of this jacket is that while you can have it professionally laundered, you can also wash and dry it at home. For those who remember trying to maintain a professional appearance with “dry clean only” uniform items during COVID, the strength of home laundering is an obvious benefit.
Some of the other strengths are hidden (isn’t that common for 5.11 apparel?) while some are obvious both to the wearer and those seeing it. The 5.11 Founder's Jacket has a basic blazer appearance with the brass buttons replaced by Melamine buttons for front closure. Just that simple change somehow creates a less noticeable but no less professional appearance.
Some other design features that are hidden inside the jacket include integrated communications routing, zippered internal chest pockets, two hidden key pockets and an integrated Flex Cuff channel. The jacket itself is cut to empower a profile that is less likely to print your concealed weapon both in common motions and in bending, twisting, etc. There are two interior phone pockets featuring 5.11’s Ready LoopTM that helps secure anything you put in those pockets even during strenuous activity or unexpected positioning.
The biggest questions, though, whether you need all those features or not, is… how comfortable is it and how good does it look in a variety of settings? During our wear testing across the past several months, the 5.11 Founder's Jacket was worn with jeans, 5.11 Stryke Pants, dress slacks and a selection of shirts that included everything from button down dress shirts to polo shirts to t-shirts. Comfort is outstanding as the jacket is very lightweight and the appearance, even after home laundering and not being pressed was still very sharp. Several people commented on the appearance of it as “beyond business casual but not quite formal” in presentation. The material and cut make it easy to move in, not binding in the shoulders as so many similar jackets are. The internal (“hidden”) pockets make carrying day to day necessities a breeze but unless you put something heavy in one of the pockets, the contents don’t impact the ‘hang’ of the jacket.
With an MSRP of $160 ($194 for the Tall version) the jacket will have limited availability online but if you happen to be in Las Vegas for SHOT Show, they will have it on display in their Booth #72448 in the Caesars Forum section, and some units available at their Las Vegas retail shop.
More information is available online at https://www.511tactical.com/511-founders-jacket.html
Lt. Frank Borelli (ret), Editorial Director | Editorial Director
Lt. Frank Borelli is the Editorial Director for the Officer Media Group. Frank brings 20+ years of writing and editing experience in addition to 40 years of law enforcement operations, administration and training experience to the team.
Frank has had numerous books published which are available on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and other major retail outlets.
If you have any comments or questions, you can contact him via email at [email protected].
