74 The Jacket is a Chicago based outerwear brand born from founder and creative director Debra Baum’s lifelong instinct for vintage and her ability to make classic pieces feel entirely new.

With more than two decades of experience across retail, design, hospitality, and vintage collecting, Baum approaches fashion as both a curator and a designer.

The brand began with a single 1940s men’s military jacket she styled with a fur collar and brooch, a look so distinctive it stopped strangers on the streets of Chicago, New York, and everywhere her travels took her. This jacket sparked constant questions about where it came from. From that moment, 74 The Jacket was formed.

Every piece begins with vintage, a jacket, a collar, a detail that feels impossible to forget. That discovery becomes the blueprint. Some pieces remain original and untouched, layered with a vintage fur collar and brooch to become a 74 The Jacket piece. Others are translated into a modern ready to wear collection, developed from original vintage patterns and reimagined in limited run, seasonless fabrics, finished with detachable collars and hand selected vintage brooches.

When a fabric runs out, it is never repeated. Designed and tailored locally in Chicago, the collection favors longevity over trend, creating outerwear that evolves through fabric, not form, and is meant to be worn often, collected over time, and kept for years.