Planet Earth Shirt

Designing and building a shirt that can truly thrive in any terrain on earth has to be an exercise in no expense spared craftsmanship. With materials starting their journey in the most cutting edge fabric mills in Switzerland and Italy, each shirt is then assembled in one of the most advanced factories in the world. Hundreds of separate construction processes, over 35,000 stitches, and more man hours than almost anything else in your wardrobe go into making this shirt a technical masterpiece.

You’ll find two strong, lightweight and quiet snap fasteners that secure the collar in place. It creates a completely different shape to a standard collar as it double fastens across your throat to keep mosquitos out. Both poppers are attached with reinforced stitching. We avoided Velcro as it’s too noisy and also unreliable in the most humid climates. We’ve used heavy duty zig zag stitching and reinforced material to strengthen the collar, so it will hold its shape even if drenched.

Working down from the collar you’ll find a giant hidden air vent that runs almost the entire length of your spine. Designed for hot, humid, or arid environments it’s one of 7 concealed air vents in the shirt that work together like in-built air-con. Each vent opens and closes either with body movement or with zip closures. And we’ve built them in the places you’re likely to sweat most – down the centre of your spine, your armpits, down the centre of your chest, and around your waist.

When you open up each vent you’ll find it’s lined internally with a feathersoft, lightweight Italian mesh fabric. The mesh is fast drying and incredibly breathable which means sweat can escape easily and air can flow into your shirt to cool you rapidly. The three vents at the back are engineered like joints, creating extra flex in the shirt down your spine and across your shoulders. The two front vents hidden either side of the chest pockets are zipped so you decide when to open them up to air. And there are two slit vents along the hem. Every vent is reinforced for strength.

Either side of the concealed air vents on the chest you’ll find two deep pockets. They concertina out to fit a phone or GPS inside them, and have reinforced stitching so you won’t tear them if you’re rushing. Built directly behind the right chest pocket is an even larger hidden pocket designed to hold things you might want to conceal in a hostile environment. With a concealed zip entrance, it’s large enough to hold your passport, money, maps or documents without any danger of them falling out.

Together the pockets are designed to make your shirt more like a utility belt, so the left chest pocket is a very different beast. Instead of a hidden passport pocket you’ll find a series of 8 stitched gadget loops made from a reinforced twill tape for attaching carabiners, compasses or any clip-on gear. Two tunnels on the front of the pocket will hold mini tools, pens or penknives, depending on your plans. On the bottom of the pocket is a reinforced hanging loop for tying off. Both chest pockets fasten with two hidden slip buttons concealed on a tough woven tape.

The Planet Earth Shirt adapts to life in the city as easily as it thrives in the jungle. The collar can be worn turned down and unfastened just like a regular collar. The cuffs button up with two slip buttons to look like regular cuffs. Both chest pockets will fit your phone. The hidden passport pocket holds your keys. And a fourth bellows pocket on the left arm will keep your credit cards to hand. The front air vents zip up. And when you’ve washed it, you’ll find two internal hanging loops with snap fastenings, so you can hang your shirt up to dry off anything from a jungle creeper to a washing line.

The fabric and construction of the shirt come into their own in cold terrain. It’s soft, stretchy and high-wicking enough to be worn as a baselayer and prevent the build up of sweat that can rapidly chill you. Or you can wear it over all your other layers as a field jacket as it’s engineered with 4-way stretch as well as multiple pockets and attachment points. The front air vents can be zipped up. And the same collar that was designed to keep the sun and insects off you will also help keep you warm when folded up and fastened to its full height.

To build a shirt that can work anywhere on earth you need to start with an exceptional material, so we built our fabric from scratch in Switzerland with cutting edge fabric mill Schoeller. By blending a robust, heavy-weight cotton with elastane, we created a material that will cool and calm your skin in intense humidity and stretch with you in any direction. The fabric is also bluesign approved which means it’s produced with minimal impact on people and the environment.

Even the way the shirt buttons up has been engineered to withstand freezing fingers, sweating hands and hostile vegetation. Rather than being sewn onto the shirt, the buttons on the front of the shirt have all been threaded onto a heavy duty woven polyester tape that runs the shirt’s entire length. The tape is then stitched onto reinforced panels above and below each button. The construction allows the shirt to flex incredibly and withstand any tearing forces, as each button is free to slide 2 centimetres up and down its section of military tape. All 17 buttons are attached in the same way.

Each button is made of buffalo imitation bioresin – a natural, non-toxic and water-based material we’ve produced by combining plant and vegetable waste with a polyester resin used by the aerospace industry. Lightweight and heat resistant, all the buttons are sculpted with a highly polished 30 degree taper towards the edges to make them extremely easy to slip into place.

Once you roll up the shirt’s sleeves, they stay rolled. They’re engineered in the shape of a moving arm, and the material is weighty enough to hold its position. But if you’re moving seriously hard or fast, you can also button them in place. On the inside of each sleeve you’ll find a 20cm long reinforced strap that you can pull out, up and over the rolled sleeve and fasten to a small slip button on the outside of the arm that’s secured on its own reinforced patch and military tape. Each 20cm fabric strap has two buttonhole settings.

Two years in the making, we created the ultimate shirt to help keep you alive in the world’s most extreme environments. The concept was simple – ‘you’ve been thrown into the back of a truck, you don’t know where on earth you’re going to end up, or what your mission is when you get there, what’s the piece of kit you want to be wearing to help keep you alive?’