We’ve seen a lot of jackets. We have never seen one you could, in theory, roof a cottage with.
Vollebak, the London brand that treats outerwear like a materials lab, has made a one-off Rock Jacket covered in thousands of tiny slate tiles.
Each one is a 5mm square, laser-cut to half a millimeter thick, set onto a neoprene base so the whole thing bends with you. From a few feet back it reads like a classic Harrington. Up close, it’s a mosaic. Up very close, it’s geology!
Rock is our oldest and, in evolutionary terms, most important technology. It made us apex predators and then we used it to build cities and empires. And we’re convinced there are new ways we can use rock, that it has another trick up its sleeve.
Our Rock Jacket is at once absurd and revolutionary, primitive but highly crafted, and making use of an advanced material technology.
Built out of 5mm x 5mm slate tiles with a neoprene backing, it looks like a glitching Minecraft texture pack. Or something the Star Wars costume department dreamt up, brutalist smart casual for a Coruscant cocktail party. It might also mark the beginning of a new chapter in geological history, the arrival of wearable rock.
The trick is borrowed from Vollebak’s Wooden Jacket, which was built from 250,000 slivers of American walnut.
French material technologist Steven Leprizé adapted the same flexible marquetry process for stone, and says making the material takes around 50 steps, with the precision of the cut mattering most.
Get the squares even a hair off and the jacket stops moving like a jacket.
Gear From the Shop
Much less expensive than a stone jacket!
This is the same company that has made coats from graphene, copper and Dyneema, so a stone jacket is almost on brand.
Still, co-founder Nick Tidball calls it their most ambitious yet, saying that among materials never used in clothing, “rock might be the most radical.” He’s careful to frame it as the start of a long road, possibly a decade or more, toward stone becoming a real clothing material the way it already is in buildings.
The one-of-a-kind jacket is on their website for auction, with a starting bid of $50,000.
There’s a quieter idea underneath the spectacle, too. Fast fashion is built to be thrown away. Slate took millions of years to form.
Wrapping your shoulders in something that old is a nice little argument for keeping what you own.
Will we be wearing slate to the grocery store next fall?
Probably not. But we love when someone asks a strange question with this much craft behind it.
A jacket made of rock. Of course it rocks!
Images courtesy of Vollebak.
