Indestructible Utility Jacket

Since the birth of the denim jacket in 1880, rugged and lightweight utility jackets have been used to protect people carrying out the toughest jobs in the toughest places. After denim became the default uniform for cowboys, miners and labourers, it was followed by the leather bomber jacket built for fighter pilots in open cockpits at 25,000ft. 140 years later we’ve built the toughest utility jacket ever created. Every fibre on the outside of the Indestructible Utility Jacket is up to 15x stronger than steel.

In 2020 we launched our first Indestructible Utility Jacket. And it remains the lightest high strength utility jacket in the world today. The fleece-lined edition of the Indestructible Jacket combines extreme strength with extreme practicality. We’ve bonded a waterproof membrane to the underside of the jacket and lined it with an ultrasoft fleece to turn it into an all-weather utility jacket.

To build the latest version of our Indestructible Utility Jacket we’ve bonded a waterproof membrane to the underside of the Dyneema®. It’s this membrane that makes the world’s toughest material weatherproof. And it’s the first time this has been done. Constructed with millions of tiny pores, the membrane allows sweat to escape while keeping rain out. So even if you’re in a snowstorm or a downpour and the Dyneema® begins to absorb water, it can’t come through the membrane, so that’s where it stops. The jacket’s critical seams are reinforced with heavy-duty bonding for waterproofness.

The Indestructible Utility Jacket is made from Dyneema® which is the single strongest fibre known to man today. If you’re into chemistry, it’s an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene that combines extreme strength with very low weight. On a weight for weight basis Dyneema® is up to 15x stronger than steel and 40% stronger than high-strength aramid fibres. While it’s often used as a composite – an ingredient added to other materials to make them exceptionally strong – the entire outside of the jacket is made from 100% Dyneema®.

To understand just how tough Dyneema® is you have to look at how it’s being deployed in the world today. It’s used to make bullet resistant vests, armour and helmets. It’s used in panels on tanks to protect against stronger ballistic threats like anti-tank projectiles. And you’ll find it in bulletproof cockpit doors in most commercial planes in the US. Unlike other high-strength materials it’s so light it floats on water, and it’s resistant to the long-term effects of moisture, UV light and chemicals, which is why it’s now also being used in artificial limbs.

Instead of using traditional jacket materials like denim or leather, we’ve built our jacket from the same material that was used to make the ropes that pulled up the Concordia cruise ship when it sank. It’s also the material that was used to create a 30km long tether designed to pull a capsule back down from space – despite reaching space it weighed just 5.5kg and only needed to be 0.5mm thick. And it’s the same material being used to create 1 centimetre thick tsunami barriers to stop 20 metre waves.

The reputations of materials are created over decades of exposure, heavy marketing spend, or moments in history like the Nylon riots in 1945 that created brand recognition overnight. Dyneema® has had none of these things. But there’s a difference between how well something performs and how well known it is, and sometimes the best things are secret. Whether it’s famous or not, this is currently the strongest fibre on Earth that you can build a piece of clothing out of.Could you

The melting point of Dyneema® is a subject of discussion online as it’s lower than the polyester used in most clothing today, and also the aramid fibres used in military gear. But to put it in context we’d have to return to the Hadean period of Earth around 4.5 billion years ago to find air temperatures that would melt it. The melting point of Dyneema® is around 130°C, which is 73 degrees above the hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth of 56.7°C in Death Valley, California.

Dyneema® Black feels like denim on a cold day. It’s soft and smooth to the touch, but you can still feel a light grain under your fingers. If you’ve ever come across ultra-lightweight Dyneema® used in backpacks you’ll know it feels and sounds a bit like paper. But the material we use is simply a different species. It’s called Dyneema® Black which is far stronger and far thicker because it’s spun then woven. And it had never been used for clothing before until we used it to build our Indestructible Puffer at the end of 2019.

On either side of the chest you’ll find two hidden pockets designed to hold things you might want to conceal in a hostile environment. With a hidden zip entrance, they’re each large enough to hold your passport, money, maps or documents without any danger of them falling out. Or they can also concertina out to fit a phone or GPS inside them. They’re built with reinforced stitching and can be double locked with a metal fastener.

There are two large open side pockets that let you tuck your hands in for warmth. They’re lined with moleskin, a densely woven, windproof brushed polyester known for its softness and comfort. The cuffs are lined with exactly the same material and fasten with two heavy-duty metal snaps.

Fleece-lining the arms of the jacket would make it bulky and impractical, so we’ve lined them with a layer of super compact insulation that we’ve used before in our ultralight running gear. Then next to your skin is a silk-like material made from cotton waste called cupro.

The colder Dyneema® gets the stronger it gets, which is why it’s used to make the mooring lines on giant ships and deep-water oil rigs that have to perform in freezing seas. A mooring line on a winch buried under heavy ice on a ship sailing in extreme conditions can’t afford to fail. As the temperature drops down to -50°C the Dyneema® ropes gain 5-10% strength. Projections show that the rope would gain even more strength if it dropped to -150°C. And it doesn’t just get stronger, it also loses no strength in relation to abrasion resistance or cutting.

The entire jacket is constructed with an ultrastrong bonded polyester thread. Rather than being made from a single strand, bonded thread is made up of multiple intertwining strands which are sealed together with a coating and heat treatment. This creates a heavy-duty, high tensile strength thread normally only found in shoes and backpacks that’s resistant to fraying.

We wanted to create a jacket that could withstand the toughest places on Earth. Nature claws at you, hits you and freezes you. So in our testing we exposed the jacket to the shearing, tearing, and blunt-force traumas that you’ll get in the real world from rocks, ice, trees, and falls. Dyneema® is so strong this jacket is almost impossible to rip. And blunt-force trauma will have almost no impact on it other than marking it.

The short answer is it won’t survive bullets or the inside of a volcano. Yet. This is a jacket designed to perform in the toughest environments on Earth. But it is not built for extreme heat, so don’t fire a flamethrower at it. And we designed it for adventure not for warzones. So while this is the strongest Dyneema® ever used in a jacket, it won’t stop bullets. You need more layers of Dyneema® for that.