CP Company worked with the Royal College of Art to recreate and update Massimo Osti's "Goggle Jacket" — a jacket designed for Italy's Mille Miglia open-road endurance race that ran between WWI and WWII. They modernized the materials, rethought some of the fit issues — a clever flourish reduces bunching while sitting; another moves the watch-window so you can check the time without moving your hands from the steering wheel — but still managed to produce something that looks simultaneously futuristic and retro. It's a gorgeous piece of clothing, though £879 is too rich for my blood.
Throup’s version of the jacket was constructed on a full-size sculpture of the human form in driving position, but also tailored in a new way so that the actual shape of the jacket could literally morph from a standing to a driving position with minimal fabric build up and maximum comfort around the waist and arms. This was achieved with two intelligently engineered fabric panels at the sides of the jacket which could be activated by zips as and when needed. The hood was completely redesigned to be anatomically accurate and allow a driving helmet to be worn inside it. The placement of the watch window was reconsidered so that the driver wouldn’t have to twist his wrist to glance at the time, and the goggles became both more ergonomic and more reminiscent of the Mille Miglia’s 1920s origins. Linings and features were made detachable, and Throup managed to create the first garment in history to have been made from GORE_TEX which was consequently garment dyed by Tinto Terra, the highly innovative treatment which uses cultivated soil pigments and bonds them onto fabrics. This gave the typically flat and very modern feel of GORE-TEX the look of an antique.
20th Anniversary Edition Goggle Jacket
(via Super Punch)
