Vollebak

Vollebak is a London-based direct-to-consumer clothing company that prides itself on making “clothes for the future” with science and technology. Founded by Nick and Steve Tidball, who previously worked in marketing, the company's clothing often include descriptions like a jacket “designed for a world of megastorms, where ‘waterproof’ is not enough,” a hoodie that promises to repel rain, wind, snow and fire; and and an “ice age” fleece “designed to recreate the feeling and performance of the soft hides worn by prehistoric man.”

Nick Tidball, in an interview with the Red Bulletin had this to say:

As a former architect, I was taught that all the materials in the world are yours to play with, and once you discover things like meta-aramid and para-aramid fibres, such as those used in our Garbage Sweater [derived from recycled firefighter suits and bulletproof vests], why wouldn’t you use them to make something totally different? Getting lost in a rabbit warren of research is what we do. If we can’t find the answers, it’s our job to supply them.

Vollebak has raised around $10 million in outside funding, including via a Series A round, led by the London-based venture firm Venrex, with participation from Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, and Headspace CFO Sean Brecker, among others.

The company created a Solar Charged Jacket that stores and re-emits light, a pair of 100 Year Sweatpants built to withstand fire, nature, water, and other elements, and gear for Mars—engineered with an anti-gravity pocket for shifting gravity fields, a ballistic nylon outer shell, and a vomit pocket for puking in space. Vollebak also made two tough t-shirts: the Carbon Fibre T Shirt engineered with 120 metres of carbon fibre normally found in jet engines and supercars, and the Ceramic T Shirt embedded with the same ceramic technology as the International Space Station.

Relaxation Hoodie

The Garbage Sweater is built from old bulletproof vests and firefighter suits that were supposed to have been thrown away in the dump. The company's Full Metal Jackets utilizes about 11km of copper—what it describes as the future building block for intelligent, disease-resistant clothing. Vollebak's Planet Earth Shirts are described as being designed for all 510 million square kilometres on the surface of Earth, while their Black Algae T Shirt is grown in forests and bioreactors and turns into worm food at the end of its life.

Solar Charged Jacket filmed over 24 hours