Designed for a dystopian future

Today you’ll find space blankets at the end of marathons where sudden drops in metabolic heat production and wet running clothes put runners at risk of hypothermia. The metal coating stops up to 97% of body heat escaping, dramatically reducing heat loss and stabilising body temperature. But originally this material technology was developed by NASA for spacecraft insulation to stop it freezing in space. We’ve used an advanced version of that technology and built the Thermal Cloaking Jacket. 

The metallised ripstop in the Thermal Cloaking Jacket is created using a galvanic bath and electrochemistry. First, we make the fabric conductive, which you can achieve by seeding it with metal particles or coating it in a conducting polymer. Then you submerge it into a bath of metal salts with current running through it. At this point metal ions plate themselves onto every fibre, atom by atom. The result is fabric that behaves like metal but still moves and breathes like cloth.

The metallised surface of the Thermal Cloaking Jacket has very low emissivity, bouncing back the IR radiation from your body, emitting very little heat, and making you appear cold or even invisible to infrared cameras.

To build the jacket we worked with Italian textile technologists Lenzi Egisto who create high-tech protective clothing. They have been developing new ways to bond metal to fibres to create materials that can do seemingly contradictory things at the same time – combining high levels of insulation with breathability, metal coatings with flexibility, and keeping you warm while masking body heat in front of thermal imaging cameras. Today our Thermal Cloaking Jackets are created by electroplating polyamide ripstop with a very fine layer of tin and copper.

While the idea of the protective ‘tin foil hat’ is now used to suggest someone who has spent a bit too long on the internet, the idea first surfaced in a 1927 science fiction short story by Julian Huxley – biologist, early transhumanist, eugenicist and the brother of ‘Brave New World’ author Aldous Huxley. While crumpled metal hats probably have no place in fashion, the idea of metal helping shield you from various forms of electromagnetic radiation does have a place in science.

The Thermal Cloaking Jacket comes with a precision cut, button-front detachable liner which works just as well as a warm standalone jacket. It was inspired by the modular cold-weather systems first engineered for U.S. Army fishtail parkas. The M-48, M-51 and M-65 were all built around the same idea – a lightweight shell and a highly insulated inner jacket that could be buttoned in, removed, repaired, or worn on its own.

We’ve taken the M-65’s quilted liner and completely reinvented it using ultra high grade materials and 21st-century construction. Its outer surface is a soft-touch, wool-cashmere flannel, and it’s built with two large patch pockets lined with a cupro-cotton fabric produced by Brunello in Italy. The onion-pattern quilt is packed with cashmere and polyester insulation that’s locked in place so it can’t drift or create cold spots.

Just like the detachable liners in the M-48, M-51 and M-65 fishtail parkas, the Thermal Cloaking Jacket uses a modular attachment system designed to lock two layers together so they behave like a single cold-weather machine. The original military liners fastened to their shells using a network of buttons at the neck, cuffs, facings and hem, keeping the insulation exactly where it needed to be.

The Thermal Cloaking Jacket updates that idea with a far more engineered, elegant and flexible system. A string of loop tabs along the front of the liner fasten over internal buttons on the shell. Two dedicated buttons at the back of the neck anchor the top of the liner, and snap tabs at the cuffs connect the two sleeves. Once docked, the shell and liner move as one piece. Undock it, and the liner operates as a fully independent jacket.

The jacket comes with a fully lined hood that can be tucked and zipped inside an invisible pocket in the collar. It’s built with topstitched seams, a centre-back adjuster and fold-back front flaps with invisible snap fastenings so it packs away cleanly without adding bulk.

Two zipped hand pockets are lined with Italian cupro-cotton and sit under snap-fastening storm flaps, while a concealed chest pocket hides between the split double placket behind an invisible zip. Inside, every pocket bag is French-seamed and lined with cupro-cotton.