Fjällräven Keb Eco-Shell Jacket – Performance

Swedish brand Fjällräven is hot right now. Its range of slightly retro-styled, but functional outdoors kit and its use of canvas-type waxed poly-cotton G1000 fabrics has attracted a bit of an outdoors cult following.

It managed all that without going fully waterproof, but around a year back, the brand launched Eco-Shell, and, as you’d expect, it’s subtly different from traditional waterproofs. For a start the recyclable Polyester-based 3-layer laminate fabric feels beautifully soft and quiet in use.

Next it has a smattering of traditional Fjällräven touches like the main leather zip-pull and signature leather arctic fox brand patch. And finally, in the case of our test jacket, it comes in a beautiful colour the brand calls ‘UN Blue’ for obvious reasons.

How Does It Work?

It looks great, but how does it work? First it doesn’t have any ultra-technical pretensions. The cut is neat, but actually quite generous – we could almost go down a size from our normal medium – with a walking-friendly, longer than average length. The sleeves are generously long too.

For practicalities it’s hard to fault. We like the cavernous, Napoleon-style chest pockets with their neat elasticated phone or media sub-pockets, the adjusters at hem and cuffs are easy to use. And the hood works very well indeed.

It’s helmet compatible in the sense that it genuinely works properly with a climbing helmet for mountaineering or ski-touring. And the stiffened and wired peak is good news then things get properly gnarly.

Hot And Sticky?

As far as breathability goes, we’d say it’s in the ballpark. Not as impressive as Polartec’s class-leading NeoShell – used in the Jöttnar Asmund for example – but certainly not a horrible sweat-box either. For normal hill use it’s fine, if you overcook things, you will get sweaty.

Having said that, big core vents, rollable sleeves and venting front-zip give some cooling capacity and the same’s true of waterproofs generally. Go hard and you’ll get hot and sweaty.

Finally, we’re a little wary of the longterm durability of that soft-faced Polyester fabric. It doesn’t have the same fortress feel of heavy duty Nylon-based laminates and we wouldn’t want to use it for, say, mixed winter climbing, but to be fair, our long-term launch jacket has been on the go for a year now and is still doing fine.