Carbon Fibre Jacket

With an atomic structure stronger than steel, carbon fibre is normally used to reinforce components in missiles, jet engines and the world’s fastest cars. But carbon fibre can also be engineered to enhance the strength and elasticity of clothing. So we’ve woven 180 metres of it into the Carbon Fibre Jacket to create a highly resilient, elastic and lightweight outer layer.

We start by engineering carbon fibre filaments into spirals, before wrapping them around an elastane core. Together they work like high-strength springs, expanding and compressing as the jacket stretches and moves. The carbon fibre increases the jacket’s stress resistance and tensile strength, which is the force needed to break fibres when they’re pulled in opposite directions. This means that the jacket is highly resistant to wear and tear, as instead of stretching out over time, the fibres simply snap back into shape again and again.

Just under a third of the jacket is built from elastane, which is the same amount you’d normally find in high performance compression gear. It gives the jacket extreme 4 way stretch but remains incredibly lightweight.

While lots of the technology we use in our clothing is invisible to the naked eye, the carbon fibre is really easy to see. The grid of dark grey carbon fibre strands contrasts with the jacket’s base material to create a pixelated effect. Each carbon fibre ‘pixel’ is exactly 3mm high and 3mm wide.

The jacket comes with two large zipped side pockets. The zippers are completely concealed behind carbon fibre fabric, so that only their grippy rubber pullers are visible.

A water resistant two way zipper starts at the funnel collar and runs down the centre of the jacket. The cuffs can be tightened by 2.5 centimetres with a simple lightweight snap fastener system. And the jacket is cut in a minimalist track jacket shape, making it versatile and easy to wear through every season.

The material we know as carbon fibre is made up of thousands of these individual carbon filaments bundled together and protected by a coating. These larger carbon fibres are classified by how much pulling force the fibre can exert without breaking – known as tensile modulus. Whereas steel has a tensile modulus of around 29 million pounds of force per square inch (PSI), carbon fibre ranges from around 30 to 145 million PSI, which is 5x stronger than steel.

As well as being baked into other materials, carbon fibre can also be woven into them to increase their strength. The first step of the process is engineering super thin filaments of carbon fibre into spiral structures. We then wrap these spirals around strands of stretchy elastane, before combining them with Nylon and more elastane to make the final material.