Vollebak just made a jacket that no two people will ever see exactly the same way. The Black Squid Jacket mimics the iridescence and bioluminescence of its eponymous cephalopod.
It has more than 2 billion tiny glass spheres that scatter and reflect light. In dull light, the jacket appears black and oily.
But hit it with bright light, and the Black Squid Jacket explodes into a rainbow of shiny of hues.
“Because of the way the disruptively structured microscopic glass spheres on the surface of the jacket scatter light, two people can be looking at the jacket from two different angles and will see entirely different patterns and colors,” the brand claims.
No doubt, this jacket looks really cool. And with a price tag just shy of $1,000, it’d better be. Beyond the “squid” outer, the jacket is a standard shell jacket. Fully water- and windproof, the three-layer ski and snowboard shell has oversize pockets and a generous cut. Add in the helmet-compatible hood, high collar, and pit zips, and it checks all the boxes for winter pursuits.
Of course, a similarly spec’d jacket can cost a fraction of the Black Squid’s MSRP. But you’re not going to wear this primarily for its performance. The premium on this shell is that you’ll be visible at the top of the hill … from the very bottom.
In fact, Vollebak claims the optical effects created by this jacket dovetail with military and scientific materials research: “The goal is to create an equivalent synthetic material that can rapidly camouflage itself by mimicking its surrounding environment … that would enable soldiers and machines to seemingly disappear.”
But Vollebak’s aim was the opposite. It just wanted to make a truly unique, trippy jacket. And with more than 40,000 tiny light-refracting spheres in every square centimeter, that’s what you get.
Stephen Regenold writes about outdoors gear at http://www.gearjunkie.com