Arc'teryx Veilance Nemis Jacket Review
I have carried the Nemis since January 2023. Not worn, carried. It lives in my bag and comes out when a mall or an office gets cold, and it gets packed for most of my trips as the one jacket that looks sleek and keeps some rain and wind off. When the temperature allows, it is also what I wear outdoors while traveling.
Usability & Features
The whole point is weight. At 290 g the Nemis disappears in a bag. I roll it before packing, not very neatly, and it shrugs off the creases when it comes out, which is what makes the daily carry work. A jacket that needs hanging to look right would have stayed in the closet.
The shell is a stretch woven nylon with 6% elastane, taped seams with a 1.6 mm seam allowance, elastic at the collar, cuffs and hem, two hand pockets with hidden zips and two zipped laminated pockets inside. No membrane, no Gore-Tex. It is a softshell bomber, and it should be judged as one.
That means water resistance is the honest weak spot. It was not great new, and it is worse now. Beading has faded, and in anything beyond light rain the fabric soaks through where the water hits hardest, shoulders first. Light rain is still fine. I have not tried re-treating it with a DWR spray, and I probably should, because that is the one thing standing between this and a jacket I would call weatherproof enough.
It is also thin. Below cool-and-dry it needs a heavy layer underneath, which is expected from a shell, and there is no hood, so it is not what I reach for when I know I will be under the elements for long. Where it is at its best is humid weather, where the light fabric and the wind block are exactly what you want and anything heavier would be a mistake.
It has done some hiking too, on days where the forecast was kind. Mostly though it is a city jacket with enough technical fabric to survive a city day going wrong.
Aesthetic & Design
Mine is black in a size small, and the fit is slim the way I like it. This is the part that made me buy it and the part that keeps it in the bag. It looks sharp over a collared shirt and it lifts a plain t-shirt to something you can walk into a dinner in. The closest comparison I can make is a suit blazer. The Nemis beats a blazer in every way except that it does not look quite as formal, and it does that at a fraction of the weight and with rain protection a blazer will never have.
This is the same Veilance design language as the Frame Polo, clean lines and nothing on the outside that reads as outdoor gear. The difference is that the Nemis delivers on the travel promise where the polo did not.
Durability & Care
Three and a half years of being stuffed into a bag daily, and the condition is better than I expected. There are scuffs, and the black has faded slightly. The elastic, the zips and the seam tape are all fine.
Other owners have reported baconing on Veilance pieces, where the seam tape puckers into wavy ridges along the seams after washing. Mine has none. I have washed it a couple of times in total over the years and done nothing else, so the minimal care regime is working, though I suspect a wash and a DWR treatment would bring some of the beading back.
Final Thoughts
I would buy it again, and I would buy it faster if the DWR were better. The Nemis is discontinued, so that means the used market. Veilance has moved on to newer tech-suit style jackets that I have not tried, so I cannot say whether they are the same thing with a new name or something different.
Skip it if you are price conscious. It is Veilance, and the price is Veilance. For anyone else who wants one jacket to live in a bag and be ready for a cold office, a windy street, an evening out and a spot of rain, this is the one I have not found a reason to replace.
