Our 100 Year Hoodies have always been tough. But our new zip through edition is the softest and lightest version we’ve ever made. It’s super stretchy, lined with ultrasoft breathable fleece, and has 4 huge zipped front pockets for stashing your gear. But it’s also windproof, abrasion resistant, water repellent, fire resistant, and can withstand temperatures 4x hotter than the sun. So you can now wear it anywhere, and all year round.

Making a hoodie that can do this isn’t easy. In numbers, we’ve spent the last 3 years in R&D working on the 100 Year Hoodie, and the material alone takes 20 weeks to make. And that’s because it combines 4 different layers of material technology.

While the hoodie is designed to cope with some of the most extreme threats the next century might send your way, on a practical level you’ll find the thick fleece lining makes it ultra-soft on the inside, while the high strength polymer coating makes it incredibly hard wearing on the outside.

The outside of the entire hoodie is embedded with a highly durable coating developed by Polartec called Hardface®. It’s a patented polymer surface treatment that increases the hoodie’s lifespan by making it extremely resistant to abrasion and snagging. The high strength polymers are fused directly into the fibres, so the coating can’t be rubbed off or washed out. It feels completely smooth to the touch, and you only know it’s there by the subtle tessellating pattern that’s visible across the surface of the material.

The hoodie’s outer surface is also coated with a water repellent treatment to help it shed light rain and snow. The type of coating we use is what’s known as a C0, meaning it’s completely free of any toxic fluorocarbons. This same technology helps the hoodie to dry out quickly when it gets wet.

The underside of the hoodie is a soft engineered fleece, and it’s this inner layer that provides the warmth and comfort you want from any great hoodie. It has an extremely compact structure that traps thousands of tiny thermal air pockets and makes it 4x more windproof than regular fleece. It means you can either wear it just like a regular hoodie, or as your insulation layer in colder temperatures.

The hoodie has four large, super practical front pockets. Long, two-way zippers connect the top and bottom pockets on each side so you can open and close the four pockets in any combination you want. If you want to keep the two higher pockets for keys, phone and wallet, and the lower pockets free for your hands, you can. The zippers are all rubberised and water resistant. The pockets are even lined with an ultra-tough blend of Cordura and cotton, and are secured down with stitched bartacks.

You’ll find a full-length two-way zipper running down the centre of each hoodie. We chose a reverse coil zipper as it has more teeth, which increases durability. The zipper is water resistant with a clean rubberised finish, and there’s a soft chin guard at the top for comfort. As the zipper is two-way you can easily adjust the hoodie from either the collar or the hem.