Off Grid Jacket

Detachable pockets for gathering dinner

If you’re off grid and fending for yourself, you can use the two detachable pockets at the back of the jacket to gather wild food, plants, herbs and fruit, or some eggs. Or to put it another way, dinner. They’re 24cm x 23cm – the same kind of dimensions as a standard stockpot. The pockets are attached to a heavy-duty strap which doubles as an adjuster to let you tighten the jacket at the waist. And both pockets are detachable, making it easy to take them off and fill with supplies, or leave them at home when you need to.

Giant storage pockets inside the jacket

The pockets on our Off Grid Jacket are built for versatility. Open up the jacket and you’ll find two giant internal storage pockets designed to hold large items like firewood, maps, tools, flasks or spare kit. Both pockets are built from a durable elastic mesh that expands the more you put inside them, and they’re welded to the Cordura lining. The pockets close with a cord fastener so you can tighten them up when you need.

Five more pockets at the front

The Off Grid Jacket has nine pockets in total, and five of them are at the front. There’s a hidden pocket on the chest for small off-grid type things – maybe a pen-knife rather than a phone. There are two zipped side pockets with soft fleece lining. And there are two storage pockets for things that close with metal snap fasteners.

Lined with super-compact insulation to keep you warm

Our Off Grid Jacket is built from an advanced four-layer system. So underneath the super tough outer layer and the waterproof membrane, we’ve built the middle layer with compressed and lightweight insulation. Using the same technique we use in our Nomad Puffer, we compress the insulation to under a third of its original size before stitching it into the jacket. So while it takes up 70% less space, it keeps 80% of its thermal properties. The inside of the jacket is then finished with a hard-wearing Cordura lining.

Our insulation is made from recycled plastic

Instead of pulling feathers out of ducks, we pull plastic out of used plastic bottles and turn them into insulating synthetic fibres. Every Off Grid Jacket uses 5 half-litre recycled plastic bottles. Staying warm is all about trapping as many pockets of air next to your body as possible, so these synthetic fibres are built to be hollow, which means you’ll automatically have millions of air pockets trapped next to your skin. And as the curl of the fibres traps more air than straight fibres, the microscopic texture of the fibre itself also retains heat.

How the insulation performs against down

While down traps heat well, it doesn’t breathe well. So it’s not the ideal option if you’re working hard. If you’re on the move our insulation will do a better job of regulating your body temperature, as it will breathe better and won’t hold onto sweat. It’s also made from a blend of different fibres each with their own ‘multi-shape’ structure. Some are designed for puffiness, others for resilience or thermal efficiency. By making each fibre a different shape, we stop them linking together and clumping like down does when it gets wet.

How plastic is turned into insulation

To turn recycled plastic bottles into insulation we work with pioneers in thermal insulation based in Milan. They’ve been working on recycled fibres and using plastic bottles in their technology since the 1980s, well before it was the cool or right thing to do. They use a process called mechanical recycling to blend the bottles, eliminating the need for hazardous chemicals and creating synthetic fibres that have the highest loft for the lowest weight, just like down.