Some of my most miserable moments have been cold and soaked at the same time. Wet alone, fine. Cold alone, fine. Cold and wet together is the worst feeling I know, which is part of why I will never go cold-water swimming voluntarily. So I have spent more time than I should hunting for a raincoat that actually keeps me dry. Four coats in, I have a verdict, and the verdict is that “waterproof” is more of a temporary state than a feature.
I had a secondary preference making the hunt harder: I don’t love synthetics. Cotton and wool breathe, plastic doesn’t, and a coat that keeps the rain out but soaks you in your own sweat is a different kind of wet. That preference cost me some time, as you’ll see.
L.L.Bean: One Wash and Done
My first real rain jacket was an L.L.Bean. Worked great until I got vomit on it (long story) and had to wash it. That single wash destroyed the waterproof coating. The jacket survived; the function didn’t. I went from a rain jacket to a windbreaker in one cycle.
I tried Nikwax to revive it. Did nothing. I also tried Nikwax on some leaky winter gloves around the same time, also nothing. After two strikes I’m convinced Nikwax is mostly marketing — or at least it doesn’t restore a coating once a wash has stripped it. Worth knowing before you spend $15 hoping to save a $200 jacket.
I also had an Eddie Bauer that was sized too big and never got worn enough to evaluate. Gave it away. Square one.
Barbour Derwent: Water-Resistant Is Not Waterproof
I liked the idea of waxed canvas because it’s cotton, it breathes, and it ages well. Research kept pointing me at Barbour. The Derwent at J.Crew was the one I wanted — most of their hoodless options didn’t make sense to me, since a raincoat without a hood is mostly a coat. Jennifer found one with a hood (since discontinued) and bought it for me as a gift.
Great coat. Stylish, breathable, built well, and Barbour will re-wax it for you — which, given what they charge for it, they should. It became one of my favorite lighter-weight jackets. But it’s not waterproof. In an extended downpour the water gets through the seams first, then through the canvas itself. Re-waxing slows it down but doesn’t solve it. Water-resistant and waterproof are two different things, and Barbour is in the first category, even when they don’t say so loudly.
Stutterheim Stockholm: Waterproof, Sweatproof Not Included
I gave up on natural materials and went looking for genuine waterproofing. The reasoning was simple: fishermen have to stay dry, fishermen know what they’re doing, find what a fisherman would wear. Stutterheim, a Swedish brand, makes a rubberized fisherman-style raincoat. I found a clearance Stockholm in an acceptable green, ordered it, and committed before I could see it on.
Heavy material, ran small, hard to layer underneath, and clearance meant no returns — so the sizing mistake was permanent. But the actual waterproof question: yes. Genuinely, completely waterproof. The rain stays out.
It just sends you home wet anyway, because the same rubberized material that locks the rain out also locks your sweat in. By the end of a warm rainstorm I’m soaked from the inside. Same outcome — wet — just a different mechanism. The buttons aren’t great in a real downpour either, which doesn’t help. So now I had a coat that solved exactly one of the two ways you get wet outside. They’ve since released a lightweight Stockholm with a zip closure; that’s likely my next try, sized up so I can actually layer.
Patagonia Torrentshell 3L: Packable, With an Expiration Date
The Stutterheim solved waterproofing but failed travel — too heavy, too bulky, you don’t pack it in a carry-on without sacrificing real estate you want for other things. So I went looking for a lightweight backup. The Patagonia Torrentshell 3L kept coming up at the top of the lists, and during the research I learned something useful: rain jackets come in 2-layer, 2.5-layer, or 3-layer construction, and the layer count is roughly proportional to how long the waterproofing lasts. I’d been buying rain jackets for years assuming they were all the same. They aren’t.
The Torrentshell mostly works. It packs down small, the underarm vents zip open when you need them, and it stays out of its own way. Two complaints. It eventually leaks — not on day one, but it gets there, and “eventually” is doing a lot of work in a coat description. And it’s cut a bit too short, so in a real downpour anything in my front pockets gets soaked through the fabric above them.
Random Notes
L.L.Bean’s kids’ rain jackets are good — that’s what we use on Henry and Elias — but they’re pricey for something a kid grows out of in eighteen months. They also keep cycling the color palette, which is irritating because orange should just be a permanent option for kid visibility on a soccer sideline at dusk.
Two brands I haven’t tried but keep eyeing: Helly Hansen (the marine pedigree should mean something) and Cole Haan’s rubberized urban raincoat for the not-on-a-fishing-boat version of what Stutterheim does.
The Verdict
Four coats in, here’s the actual diagnosis. The L.L.Bean lost its waterproofing in one wash. The Barbour was water-resistant from the day I unboxed it and oversold itself. The Patagonia is waterproof until it isn’t, and the timeline isn’t disclosed. Only the Stutterheim is truly, durably waterproof, and the reason is that it’s a sheet of rubber, which is also why it makes you wet from the inside.
“Waterproof” is a temporary state on every coat I’ve owned that wasn’t basically plastic. Manufacturers know this. The lifespan of the coating, the fragility of the seam tape, the way a single wash can strip the treatment — none of that is on the label. You buy a waterproof coat. You own a water-resistant coat within two years. Nobody calls this what it is.
The lightweight Stutterheim Stockholm Zip is probably next, sized up so I can actually layer under it and with a closure that doesn’t surrender in a real storm. I’d love to be wrong about all this. I’d love a 3-layer cotton-canvas-feeling coat that genuinely stays waterproof for ten years. I just haven’t found it, and I’m starting to suspect it doesn’t exist at this price point — which is itself the verdict.
Even that's Odd 
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