Back in 2016, I bought my first bomber jacket because a mannequin in a Leeds shopping centre was wearing it with skinny jeans and looked like she’d just landed from a flight somewhere exotic and holiday brochure-esque. I brought it home, threw it over a jumper (obvs it was October) and stood awkwardly in front of my hallway mirror looking like a defeated satsuma. My flatmate at the time — Rosalind, who has never softened an opinion in her entire life if she can help it — wandered past the open door and paused, reading the room. “Oh,” she said. “That’s doing you no favours, is it.” Pause for effect. Not a question.
Another intercom: winter. I wore it twice more because I was being stupidly stubborn about the twenty quid it cost me and then banished it to the back of my wardrobe where it sat for four years BEING A PROBLEM I DIDN’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT.
Every time I saw someone rock up wearing a bomber jacket and look cool and sleek and put-together I would simmer down a private little grievance with that boxy garment category. I decided, quietly and without basis, that bomber jackets were never going to work on bodies like mine. Bodies with stomachs on them. Bodies that cling on their upper half and then BLOAT out at the waist and then cling again. Which, last I checked is most bodies that have ever existed.
When I went digging for answers on whether bomber jackets actually make you look bigger, I wasn’t typing that search without bias. My bad jacket was at that point residing in a bin bag in my wardrobe marked CHARITY SHOP SO ZIPPING AWAY RIGHT NOW. I fully intended to find confirmation that yes, boob coats were the reason I couldn’t wear them like everyone else seemed to. And then I found the actual reason my 2016 jacket had looked bad and spent an embarrassing amount of time annoyed that the jacket had so very rarely been the issue.
The Boxy Shape Isn’t the Problem, the Blow Up Is
The first thing nobody mentions about trying on a bomber jacket for the first time is that underneath all that potential dress-up fantasy, a bomber jacket is literally a box with some ribbed cuff and hem draped over the edges. That’s the whole bloody design. It doesn’t nip in at your waist like a blazer might. It’s not meant to skim across your torso like a fitted coat would. It’s a rectangle with some elastic at the openings. Its box shape is EXACTLY why it became streetwear in the first place. Loose. Simple. Wearable.
That box shape isn’t what’s going to make you look big. Plenty of clothing is basically boxes and looks amazing (trust me, I own an oversized shirt), a good coat, a warm but not bulky jumper. It’s what happens when the fabric pouring down from your shoulders to that ribbed hem CAN’T skim across your stomach without puckering at the sides and just billows out. If the jacket is too big on your body that box starts resembling a balloon payment and guess what never looks good on anyone regardless of size? A literal balloon tucked right into your midsection.
It hit me once I realised my cousin Deacon, who would objectively fit into the rugby prop stereotype if he played rugby and has never once expressed any shred of body insecurity about his stomach because comfort comes easy to him, wore the exact same jacket but in a size up “for ease of movement” and looked like, in his words, “I’m hiding a duvet.” Same broad shape. Same overall body type as lots of the people who email me convinced bombers jackets don’t work for them. Completely different outcome because he thought sizing up would equal safer, when it just equalled more excess fabric that had nowhere productive to go.
Realising that was what finally clicked it for me. I’d been burned by my first attempt at a bomber jacket so harped on about “bombers make you look big” as a hard-and-fast life rule that applied to my body. But what had ACTUALLY happened when I tried on that first jacket was that I bought it too big because someone told me bombers should always be “roomy” and all that extra fabric rested right where I needed it the least. It wasn’t criticism on my shape. It was criticism on a poor choice I made based on reading advice that wasn’t meant for that specific jacket I was trying on.
Where the Rib Hits You Matters More Than the Size on the Label
Another thing I picked up AFTER spending way too long blaming my stomach: where the ribbed hem of a bomber hits you is more important than what size you think you should wear. This sounds stupidly obvious but allow me to explain why it took me about seven tries in the Marks and Spencers changing room to work out. If that bloody ribbing hits right around the widest part of your hips or stomach it creates a freakin horizontal line right there when you don’t want one, and then everything above it wants to puff out and draw attention because fabric needs to go somewhere. It’s the same reason bad trousers can ruin an otherwise nice outfit. It’s less about the volume of the jacket and more about where that jacket stops.
I tried on 11 bomber jackets, yes ELEVEN IN THE SPACE OF A SINGLE MONTH WHICH IS WHY I ONLY REALISED WHEN I WAS COUNTING THEM LIKE A LOON TO MY FRIEND OVER DINNER AND SHE PLACED HER FORK DOWN NEVER TO PICK IT UP AGAIN last year and found that every single one that fit me properly hugged my body at SOME POINT between my natural waist and just above my hip bone. The ones that didn’t fit, across the board hit me right at the widest part of my stomach, right on my rib cage where it already naturally sticks out the most. Same figure through all eleven jackets. Wild variance on how much I liked them based on maybe five centimetres of hem placement.
My friend Marguerite, who literally has the opposite body shape to me, tall, long torso, zero waist is dealing with the opposite issue where MOST bomber jackets hit TOO HIGH on her and make her legs look like they start halfway down her ribcage. She has to hunt specifically for longer length bombers jackets just because that’s how disproportionately different her ribcage is to her waist. Both of us have body shapes that work for bombers. We both have rib placements that need the hem hit at a specific part of our bodies, which is VERY different to thinking “this item doesn’t work on people who look like me” and allows you to stop internalising every garment that fits “bad.””
Along with rib placement? The actual weight of the fabric matters too and tbh this is what no one talks about when it comes to understanding why some bombers work and some don’t. A thicker, more solid jacket with actual structure to the fabric it’s made from doesn’t need much help holding it’s shape. A thinner, softer jacket, the kind that basically just a windcheater with a ribbed hem hangs on you and basically highlights every angle of whatever you’re wearing underneath it. Which, if you’re like me and wearing it open over a jumper on an English winter day is EXACTLY how you end up with more volume in all the wrong places AGAIN. Case in point: I learned this lesson whilst getting soaked on a Manchester street in January wearing a thin bomber over a chunky knit, rain-soaked within minutes, and watching myself transform from “kind of chic” to “puppy carrying sweety” in under five minutes. That jacket taught me more about why certain bombers worked on me than any bloody shop assistant recommending styles ever has.
What I Actually Wear It With Now
Scrolls forth: I DID eventually replace that ill-fated satsuma jacket with one that had a heavier shell fabric, hit just above my hip bone and fit my actual measurements rather than “something roomy just in case” and here’s the thing that changed more about my bomber game than anything else? What I stopped wearing underneath it.
Bulky jumpers with boxy jackets is essentially volume-on-volume in all the same places. And no matter who you are that’s a hell of a lot of you wearing the same shape. Everything looked better on me once I started layering it over something thinner, less bulky. Fine knit sweaters, fitted t shirts, tucked in shirts, anything where the jacket had space to be a jacket rather than fighting your jumper for attention.
The other big game changer for me was what I was wearing underneath that ribbed hem. HIGH WAISTED trousers or skirts that hit my natural waist created a lovely line for the jacket to end on. Low rise trousers of any kind and that ribbed hem gets lost/ swallowed by whatever’s going on at your hip and suddenly you have zero definition of where your jacket ends and your pants/ skirt start. Your body just kind of blends into one large… object. Wear it over high-waisted trousers and boom, your jacket fits perfectly into that sweet spot between hips and waist.
My colleague Theodora wore hers to our office Christmas party last year paired with high thigh skimming trousers, boots, fine knit top. Nothing revolutionary. But three people asked her where she got it before they’d even finished their second glass of wine. Same style of jacket that hung off me like a sad fruit back in 2016. The difference? What SHE wore under it/top/done it with.
Nothing about that jacket magically changed other than our collective decisions around it made all the difference.
TLDR? Bomber jackets? Do not directly make you look bigger. Maybe if you wear a badly fitting bomber over a bulky sweater with the hem slapped right at the widest part of you, it might make you look bigger. But that’s not a rule about the category of jackets as a whole. It’s you wearing a BAD FIT and leaving it open like a sad sandwich. Fixes involve paying attention to rib placement, keeping the fabric choices on point (no more rain-soaked dog walking for me) and the garments you layer under and around your jacket, rather than shaving half a pound off your waist in sheer frustration.
