This Corduroy Jacket Is the One Thing St. Paul Resistance Dads Can’t Resist

Lauren Bloomquist remembers the first time her husband Anders saw The Jacket.

It was mid-July, and the couple was checking out the merch shop during a St. Paul Saints game. On display was a retro-style corduroy jacket with ST. PAUL emblazoned across the front and the St. Paul flag on the back.

Anders was smitten. “He took a picture of it right away and said, ‘Aw, not today. But something to think about,’” Lauren recalls.

And think about it he did. “Over the next couple months I kept hearing about The Jacket,” Lauren says. “He kept mentioning it, he sent the picture to his friends, and they kept talking about The Jacket. I would joke, ‘You guys are all gonna buy one and timeshare it.”

When Anders’s birthday rolled around in October, Lauren knew the perfect gift. “He was shocked,” she says. “He was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s The Jacket.'" He sent a pic to the group chat and “immediately started getting all the heart reacts, the fire reacts, all the emoji reacts.” 

If The Jacket was appealing in photos, in person it was irresistible. “One of his friends tried it on and was like ‘Oh my gosh, ordering it right now,” Lauren says. 

Soon a whole gaggle of St. Paul lefties were sporting The Jacket. “The boys and I started buying them because they’re sick,” explains St. Paul legislative aide and "Mr. Saint Paul" Tom Basgen, seen below in The Jacket, along with Racket contributor/frequent commenter Kaylee Matuszak:

“They’re absolute compliment factories," Basgen continues.

And so it began. In just two days earlier this week, the Saints sold 46 jackets—more than a third of the original order of 120 placed nine months ago. They're out of stock till May, according to Betsy Faber, the team's retail manager.

Not since Askov Finlayson’s North hat has a locally themed item of clothing caught the Twin Cities public imagination so intensely, and The Jacket is way cooler than North hats ever were.

So how did we get here? A dozen or so of Anders Bloomquist’s pals (colloquially referred to as the “St. Paul patrol dads”) bought The Jacket. When Mayor Melvin Carter was running for reelection, he wore The Jacket while door-knocking. 

But while Anders was Patient Zero, it wasn’t until Stump Party, held this past weekend at the Black Hart of St. Paul, that The Jacket really had its moment. Stump Party is an annual winter event where you stand around in the cold, swig Malört, and swing an axe at a hapless stump.

Several of the attendees wore The Jacket to Black Hart, and other Stump Partiers took notice. So did Bluesky. Forty-six orders later, the Saints were out of stock.

Faber certainly wasn’t expecting the sudden run on jackets, priced at a not-insignificant $149. The team reliably sold one or two at each game, which was her expectation. 

Just last year, the Saints brought their merch in-house. Faber, who has worked in museum retail and at Summit Brewing, was hired to manage new products, and among the first she took on was The Jacket.  

Faber collaborated with the Portland, Oregon-based company Official League in designing what the Saints website officially calls the "St. Paul Saints Hipster Corduroy Jacket." She was after “this alternative retro vibe,” she says. “I want to design it as the greatest thrift-store find in the world,” she remembers saying. 

She knew she wanted the city flag and the Saints road-jersey lettering on the front, as well as “Carhartt brown, a nod to working-class retro St. Paul.” And she was proud of her creation. “When it came in I went running into the office,” she recalls. 

Still, she wasn't expecting to have to place a new order of 72 jackets—10 of which are already claimed as pre-sales—so soon.

The coolness of The Jacket has struck a severe blow to Minneapolis's sense of superiority.

At the same time, it has come to epitomize the capital city's underdog status.

“St. Paul has this weird and deeply appealing sense of place that neighbors take real pride in, and I'm thrilled that The Jacket is becoming a prominent outward display of that community identity,” is how Anders explains it.

The dads have even begun customizing their jackets, beginning with name patches—a necessity when all your closest friends wear the same gear. 

“We had several friends over one day, and there were five, six jackets and no one could tell whose was whose,” Lauren says. “So they had to look through each person’s pockets or whatever until they figured it out.” 

“Next up, a secret handshake,” adds Anders—presumably joking, but who can say for sure?

Even St. Paul Pioneer Press music critic Ross Raihala was seen modeling his new purchase. 

“I knew I had to have it the first time I saw it,” Raihala tells us. “I just hope no one mistakes me for a bike dad or asks my opinion on craft beer.”