There’s an old adage that if you show a gun in act one, it has to go off by act three. The idea being that if you don’t deliver on a promise, you’ll let everyone down.
Consider this your first glimpse of the weapon, only on this stage — the theater of outdoor gear — it’s one extraordinary jacket. Today, Vollebak brandished a concept that by its very nature, should be impossible: A coat that’s made of wood.
The Wooden Jacket exists only as a prototype, a one of one. But the London-based purveyor of the outdoors’ most outlandish apparel appears poised to make good on its theatrical promise. The waitlist is open for The Wooden Jacket, which, assuming it comes to market, will carry a retail price as baffling as its construction.
For $3,000, you can find out firsthand what it feels like to, in Vollebak’s words, “wear your own tree.”
Want to learn more about the outdoors’ wildest gear brand? Listen to the GearJunkie Podcast interview with Vollebak co-founder Steve Tidball.
Vollebak Wooden Jacket
Details on this flight of product design fancy are as thin as paper. But Vollebak outlined its mission in developing this bizarre concept:
“We’ve just made our first prototype Wooden Jacket. Why? Because turning a tree into a jacket is an absurdly difficult technical challenge. It’s all about the technical feat vs the performance advantage of the material. It builds innovation muscle as it’s just so hard. It’s the equivalent of Daniel-San and Mr Miyagi practising the crane kick on the beach in The Karate Kid with no opponent in sight. It forces us to tackle, then solve, technical challenges that would otherwise remain completely theoretical.”
