Today you’ll find space blankets at the end of marathons where sudden drops in metabolic heat production and wet running clothes put runners at risk of hypothermia. The metal coating stops up to 97% of body heat escaping, dramatically reducing heat loss and stabilising body temperature. But originally this material technology was developed by NASA for spacecraft insulation to stop it freezing in space. So we’ve repurposed that technology and built the Anodised Jacket.

The metallised ripstop in the Anodised Jacket is created using a galvanic bath and electrochemistry. First we make the fabric conductive, which you can achieve by seeding it with metal particles or coating it in a conducting polymer. Then you submerge it into a bath of metal salts with current running through it. At this point metal ions plate themselves onto every fibre, atom by atom. The result is fabric that behaves like metal but still moves and breathes like cloth.

The metallised surface of the Anodised Jacket has very low emissivity, bouncing back the IR radiation from your body, emitting very little heat, and making you appear cold or even invisible to infrared cameras.

To build the jacket we worked with Italian textile technologists Lenzi Egisto who create high-tech protective clothing and camouflage gear for the military. They have been developing new ways to bond metal to fibres to create materials that can do seemingly contradictory things at the same time – combining high levels of insulation with breathability, metal coatings with flexibility, and keeping you warm while masking body heat in front of thermal imaging cameras. Today our Anodised Jackets are created by electroplating polyamide ripstop with a very fine layer of tin and copper.

While the idea of the ‘tin foil hat’ is now used to suggest someone has spent a bit too long on the internet, the idea first surfaced in a 1927 science fiction short story by Julian Huxley – biologist, early transhumanist, eugenicist and the brother of ‘Brave New World’ author Aldous Huxley. While crumpled metal hats probably have no place in fashion, the idea of metal helping shield you from various forms of electromagnetic radiation does have a place in science.

To make the Anodised Jacket work in every season, it comes with a detachable onion quilt liner. The two layers attach to each other with an internal button and loop system.

The jacket comes with a fully-lined hood that can be tucked into the collar and zipped away. The articulated sleeves allow for easy movement, while the two-way zip and seam-sealed inside of the jacket help keep out the elements. Two zipped hand pockets sit under storm flaps. And there’s a concealed chest pocket hidden behind the double front placket for anything you want to keep extra secure.

The Anodised Jacket has been printed in a muted anodised red and anodised grey. And the cutting-edge metallisation process bonds metal in visible clusters and clouds with an aesthetic unique to every jacket. This means that the patina of every jacket will develop differently over time.