Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Here is the real deal with these jackets... From the good, the bad, to the unfortunate. The Good: The prices on Amazon for these jackets are amazing! The jackets are beautiful, well made, thick with sherpa insulation in the torso and plenty of thick insulation in the arms. The denim washes are consistent throughout the garment and look just like the pictures you see pictured online. In my opinion they are simply strong, well made, beautiful jackets. I love them. but.... The Bad: The arms in these jackets run narrow, so if you have any sort of upper arm musculature they will be tight, too tight. This will force you into buying the next larger size jacket in order to increase the arm width (which is still snug but doable). The problem now is the jacket will be longer and wider in the torso... That's an issue because the jacket simply looks too big, wide, and long! The Solutions: 1) Some folks have tried getting around this by buying the larger size, washing and drying in order to shrink the garment (because shrinkage mostly occurs in the length of the arms and torso and a little bit in width), then wear the garment to try and stretch out the denim. Remember it is denim so it will stretch quite a bit just like your jeans do... BUT there is no guarantee it will shrink enough in all the areas you want for a perfect fit.. 2) You pay a tailor to increase the upper arm width by sewing in extra denim fabric or stretch fabric... 3) You go to Sears or a local Levis location and try on a dozen jackets to find one that fits you just right... 4) You buy a vintage 70's, 80's, 90's pre-owned jacket which were cut larger in the arms back then... Point is this: If you are tall and slender with slender arms the jacket will fit. If you are overweight with thin arms the jacket will fit. If you are built with a keg like torso and stick like arms the jacket will fit. The Unfortunate: However... If you are athletic in any way and have average muscle size, medium muscles, larger muscles, or huge muscles the jacket will not fit your arms... period. The jacket will fit in the shoulders and the torso but not the arms. Can you see the recurring theme here? My solution: I tried both the large and the XL and neither fit my arms properly and were way too wide and long in the body. (Therefore I had to return them to Amazon.) Unfortunately I ended up going to a local retailer (paid way more than if purchased through amazon) tried on 20+ jackets, got lucky, and found something I could break in. I also bought another one (by going the vintage route via ebay) which worked out even better because they were made bigger and different back then. Great jackets but terrible fit. All Levis needs to do is increase the upper arm width by 1.5 inches in order to compensate for the extra insulation put there. This is why the Sherpa jackets have this sizing problem because the manufacturers are using the pre-existing un-insulated denim jackets as the base model, filling it up with sherpa and arm insulation and....boom....poor fitting jackets.