Sleeping Bags You Can Wear

Originally published in the May 2011 issue

Staying ahead of the curve in sportswear means not only keeping up with the latest in man-made technical fibers but keeping up with design trends, too. And if you're Victorinox, it means doing both without alienating the die-hard following you've cultivated for 127 years. In short, the whole endeavor is fraught with peril, but Victorinox pulls it off nicely with a new limited-edition capsule collection, Remade in Switzerland, with designer Christopher Raeburn. It's the first time the company has brought in an outside designer, much less one a century younger than the brand itself, and the gamble is paying off.

Raeburn is, indeed, a young man, and at 28 he's only a few years into his career. He graduated from London's Royal College of Art in 2006 with a knack for using military-surplus technical fabrics to create men's and women's coats. This approach to "upcycling" — essentially making treasure from trash — made him fast friends with the green crowd, and after a few seasons showing at London Fashion Week, the fashion crowd followed suit. This led to a call from Victorinox last year, with the brand offering Raeburn access to military-surplus items like parachutes, sleeping bags, and heavy-duty blankets, all of them made for the actual Swiss Army. For a kid who grew up in southeast England collecting militaria, this was as close to a perfect gig as he was going to get.

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The seven-piece Remade in Switzerland collection is a mixture of the heavy and the light, the old and the new. "My goal was to take the original materials and completely rework them, deconstruct them, and give them a completely new life," says Raeburn. "We repurposed parachutes — the kind that pop out and slow down fighter jets when they land — into jackets. We repurposed military sleeping bags into blousons. We repurposed 40-, 50-, 60-year-old wool fabric into scarves and coats." The items aren't merely waterproof, Raeburn says, they're "really, really fully waterproof." Same goes for durability and wind resistance. There's a certain comfort, Raeburn says, in knowing that if something is good enough for the soldiers in the Swiss Army, it's good enough for you.

The collection, which is set to sell in Victorinox's own stores and a select bunch of high-end designer shops starting in September, neatly straddles the gulf between vintage and contemporary in a way that's sure to bring fresh eyes to the veteran brand. And if you're not ready to wear a bright-orange jacket made from fighter-jet parachutes, you can always spring for Raeburn's minimalist take on the classic Swiss Army knife, made from melted-down horseshoe nails. Just don't ask what they did with the horse.