clothes from the future

While vollebak’s Indestructible Chinos look and feel exactly like the chinos worn by JFK and Steve McQueen, they’re woven with the strongest fibre on Earth, and are now our best-selling pants. Like most men’s clothing, chinos emerged from war. This time it was the Spanish-American one. They were slim-fitting, flat-fronted, functional, and most importantly… really really dependable.

By 1902, after heavy field-testing, they’d been made an official part of the US Army uniform. But once World War II was over, the guys who’d fought went off to college still wearing them, turning them into an instant hit on the Ivy League campuses.

And their reputation was only cemented as a staple of mid-century menswear when they became the standard issue kit for John F. Kennedy and Steve McQueen.

Which is why, 120+ years later, you still don’t need to mess with the design. So we haven’t.

Instead we’ve taken pants you’ve always been able to rely on, and woven them with the strongest fibre on Earth… so you can rely on them even more.

Our Indestructible Chinos come in 2 colours. We’ve got a Sand edition (the lighter colour), and a Sandstone edition (which is the slightly darker colour).

While they look and feel like regular chinos, every pair of Indestructible Chinos is made with a blend of cotton and Dyneema – which is the same stuff used in body armour, arctic ropes and the sides of tanks.

CRAFTED WITH A 180-YEAR-OLD JAPANESE FABRIC MILL

To make the Indestructible Chinos, vollebak worked with Toyoshima, a 180-year-old Japanese textile company that has been certified as Japan’s first Dyneema® Premium Manufacturing Partner.

Of course you’d never know this just by putting them on.

And that’s because the Dyneema is woven in with the cotton during the weaving process, so you’ll only ever feel the softness of the cotton, not the strength of the Dyneema. And they’ve also been garment washed so they feel lived in from day one. So you’ll only ever know about the Dyneema when you suddenly need it.

Fit wise they’re similar to Equator Pants but with a slightly more relaxed cut. And if you want a hand with sizing you can get in touch with us here. For the Silo, NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL.

Technical Details

Material made in Japan: 95% cotton, 5% Dyneema®
Highly abrasion resistant
Zip fly
5 belt loops
2 front pockets
2 zipped rear pockets
Pocket lining: 70% cotton, 30% Cordura
Gentle machine washing 30°C
Constructed in Portugal

Part spaceship, part shop, the first Vollebak Spaceshop launched in Copenhagen in June. Before it heads off to service nearby galaxies, our friends at Vollebak are sending it on a world tour of Earth first.

Over the last year our friends at Volleback have partnered with sonic powerhouse Bang & Olufsen and Saga Space Architects to build their first prototype interstellar delivery vehicle …the Vollebak Spaceshop.

The craft itself is over 1,000kg of precision engineering that offers a glimpse into a future of interplanetary kit deliveries between Earth, the Moon and Mars. It was designed with SAGA Space Architects whose work includes lunar habitats for the European Space Agency, and lighting systems to help astronauts sleep on the International Space Station. And it’s fitted with Bang & Olufsen’s iconic Beolab 5 and Beosound 2 speakers.

If you missed launch night it involved space-based clothing, Earth-based alcohol, and the sound of the Spaceshop flexing its 120 decibels of muscle with ‘Intergalactic’ by the Beastie Boys. As soon as the next destination has been selected they’ll let you know. And while you’re waiting they have 4 pieces of space-ready cargo available for testing.

It includes their Martian Aerogel Jackets which are built from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s hypersonic deep space parachutes that landed the last Rover on Mars – and the same aerogel that stopped it freezing in the vacuum of space, and burning up on entry. They have their awesome Full Metal Jackets engineered from 11 kilometres of disease-resistant copper that were hailed by WIRED as “the virus-killing coat of the future,” and they’ve built to explore how humans could avoid taking diseases from Earth up into space.

You’ll also find electromagnetic Shielding Suits embedded with pure silver that block WiFi, Bluetooth, Ku-band satellites and radar systems, and deflect mid and long wave infrared radiation so they can’t be seen on infrared cameras. And last up they have the world’s first Anodised Jacket. Built with metallic insulation originally engineered by NASA to stop their spacecraft freezing in space, each jacket is fused with a near-invisible layer of metal from a galvanic bath that makes you appear cold or even invisible to infrared cameras.