Romanian Field Jacket, DPM, Unissued

When you steal ideas, steal from the best. Even better, if you steal from thieves. We present to you: the Romanian version of possibly the best field jacket the British ever made.

You take a Combat Soldier 95 Parka, straighten the chest pockets, and move the rank tab from the centerline to the shoulders. That's this DPM jacket in a nutshell.

Retained is the excellent arm mobility, large pockets with Canada-style buttons, enormous inner chest pockets with zippers, and good adjustments. The windproof fabric is doubled below the forearms and elbows, the cuffs have velcro tabs, and the waist and hem can be tightened or loosened as necessary.

The front closure is a long zipper with a storm flap secured with hook-and-loops. The protective collar reaches the ears when upright but can be folded and opened when the weather isn't quite as punishing.

Some bad things are to be expected, because Romania. Or so we thought. The button edges are a wee bit sharp and the zippers might not be quite as good as the originals. This is pessimistic speculation on our part, though. It could be that we're just so fond of the CS95 clothing system that we are looking for faults that aren't there. The fabric seems durable and convincing, and as a whole, this garment should outlast the China-made PCS clothes of the British armed forces with ease.

Size info

These are principally European sizes with a length group specified. The length group I is regular and 0 is tall, because of course you have to do things backwards. We put the maximum recommended user measurements in the brackets but the cut is generous so it's not a precise science. If you are within the recommended width, you'll have clearance for warm clothes under the jacket.

The sleeves have a large base diameter for mobility, so an exact pit-to-pit measurement would have been difficult. So the torso width is measured lower than usual, the jacket doesn't get any narrower than that.

Materials

Windproof ripstop-polyester. Can be machine-washed but you don't really wash this kind of a jacket.

Romanian army surplus

Pretty much every jacket we got is unissued, some even in the factory wraps!